#rainydaywednesdays

the definition of the last week

I was privileged to spend time with Blakey on Monday (is privileged the right word?), and I got to tell him and Traci all about Ashley. "Don't move too fast," Blake said. He doesn't need to worry: I am terrified of moving too fast. Ashley and I, we're still getting to know one another, and I've told her that the very LAST thing I want to do is move fast. It isn't just that it's a lesson I learned in the wake of everything with the Wisconsinite; the fact that Ashley has kids, and she's introduced them to me (though I met her oldest as a newborn), makes not moving fast absolutely important. I don't want her kids to get close to me until I'm 100 percent sure of what I want. I do know that I enjoy spending time with her, but that's not enough to know, exactly, where this is going.

She and I went to IHOP yesterday night, and she asked me, "Do you still love Mandy?" I really hoped she wouldn't ask that question. I do still love her. I was going to marry her, after all, and the way things went down was her doing, not mine. The fact that I do still love her doesn't mean I can't begin the process of getting to know someone else. I just need to be cognizant of the fact that it is a process. I can't expect to love Ashley right away in the same way that I loved Mandy. The love I had for Mandy grew over years of knowing her, sharing experiences with her, going through Good Times and Bad Times with her (as best we could given the distance), and the reality is that the love I came to have for her wasn't something present in the beginning. Love takes time to grow; real love--the decision and commitment of the will to love, cherish, nourish, and die to yourself for a particular and exclusive woman--doesn't come overnight. If I don't sense that love for Ashley, I'm foolish to see that as a Red Flag. I have to trust what I know to be true: my love for Mandy will fade, so that she will become no more a memory than those who entered and exited my life before her. Unrequited love isn't romantic; it's downright foolish. 

There is, I'll admit, an element of pressure in this odd and unexpected journey (I feel a bit like Bilbo Baggins after that sentence). She's always telling me how I'm so different from other men, how she's never met someone with such strong values and convictions, someone with such kindness and compassion. Sometimes she cries as we pray together, because she's never experienced that. She can't contain the excitement of doing a bible study together (is studying the Heidelberg Catechism exciting now?), and she can't contain her shock that someone like me actually exists. "So you were going to marry this girl, and you were reading book after book and studying Christian marriage to learn how to love her well and in a way that honors God and presents to the world a picture of the gospel? I didn't even think guys did stuff like that, especially not on their own initiative!" She wants to hold onto my hand and never let go, and she didn't even let the last guy she dated hold her hand for over a month; she doesn't want the guys she dates to meet her daughters, but she introduced me to them right away, saying, "I can tell you're a great man, and I can tell you'd be a great father." On the surface it's warming to my heart, but deep down it's downright terrifying, for at least two reasons. First, because I'm not at all how great she thinks I am. The way I blew my top in the wake of everything with Mandy, the way I let my anger vent through my words, the way I said and wrote hurtful things... That's a huge black smear to my character. And it's terrifying because I feel this pressure to live up to the hype. Eventually she'll see I'm not all she thinks I am; the chinks in my armor and the black spots in my heart will become evident in time. 

These are just some of the things I'm thinking.

She's an awesome woman, and I really enjoy spending time with her.

I'm trying not to freak myself out, and I'm resisting the urge to rebuild my walls.

We'll see how this pans out; it'll either be really good, or really sad.

But, hell, that's how dating works. Right?