5.5.15

My prayer is that if God wants me to be with Ashley—if she is an answer to my prayers, as she believes I am to her—then He will heal my broken heart and cultivate within me a love that rivals the love I had for the Wisconsinite; that furious, unquenchable, unconditional love is the love I want to have for Ashley. With Mandy I felt alive, passionate, excited, and overwhelmed by gratitude. I wanted onto to love her better each and every day. Ashley says she needs a man like me, a REAL man who is faithful, compassionate, and caring; a man who leads with a quiet, unassuming strength; a man who doesn’t find his value in worldly things or titles; a man who is gentle, loving, and invested in her daughters. She told Brandy, “When you find a man like Anthony, you don’t let him go. When you’ve been in an awful marriage, you see what really matters in a partner. I was young and dumb and all the things I wanted in a man were the very things I shouldn’t have wanted, things the world told me were important but which weren’t at all important in a partner.” Ashley is phenomenal. She’s so insanely supportive that even Amanda said, “You do too much for him.” She makes so many sacrifices and has such a servant’s heart. She wrestles so much with her faith, with the questions of her past, is plagued by doubt, and yet Christ is seen so clearly in her. She isn’t critical but understanding. She’s patient, she’s kind, she isn’t easily angered, and she’s devoted to working through hard times. “Relationships are hard. In every relationship you’ll experience the desire to run.” The ones who don’t run, the ones who back up their words with action, those who endure the angst of sleeping nights and gnawing stress, they are rare. I’ve been in enough relationships to see that Ashley is incredibly rare. I want to believe that God’s plan is for Ashley and I to work. I want to believe she’s an answer to my prayers.

Ashley confessed to me, “When we first started talking, I wasn’t physically attracted to you. And I prayed that if God wanted us together, that He would make me attracted to you. And you know what? You’ve become, to me, the very definition of masculine sexuality.” At La Boiteaux Woods thirty weeks ago, I sat in the dried up streambed poking at crawdad skeletons and flicking Daddy Long-Legs off my legs, praying that God would have mercy on me and bring me a woman who is a Christian, who puts a priority on holy living, who believes in biblical leadership and submission, a woman who wants to raise a godly family. I prayed for a woman who wouldn’t run, for a woman who would love me for who I am, and I prayed that I would love her in the same way that I loved the Wisconsinite. Not a few days later, by a weird twist of circumstances, we were getting drinks at the Irish Pub and catching up after nine years of not seeing one another. I’d been on a handful of dates since Mandy broke up with me, but each time I just felt sick to my stomach, reliving the memories, trying to feign interest in the woman across the table, knowing she could NEVER measure up to the Wisconsinite. Not even the anger in my heart, an anger of the sort that I had never before known, could obscure my undying love for her every curve, every flaw, and every part of her being, the Good and the Bad. But when Ashley and I met up, I didn’t feel any of that. We both had a great time, and in her presence, I didn’t hurt. We kept hanging out, and three weeks later we became boyfriend and girlfriend.

The relationship isn’t easy. Relationships never are. Those who expect the “right fit” to be easy are deluded, informed by Disney and wishful thinking rather than reality. Ashley has been so incredibly patient as I wrestle through my issues. She cares only about my well-being, and she has spent countless nights awake in bed, staining her pillow with tears as she prays for my healing, for my wholeness, for me recovery in the wake of the Wisconsinite. No woman, to my knowledge, has EVER stayed up until 6 AM praying for me. That just goes to show her genuine care for me. All this to say, I have reason to believe that Ashley IS an answer to prayer. But there’s just one thing: I don’t *yet* love her the way that I loved Mandy. It would be irresponsible, even cruel, to pretend otherwise. I could say the right things, the things she wants to hear, but that wouldn’t be honest. I WANT to love her in that way, but it’s not something I can force. My heart IS broken; there’s no point in denying it. People can break under the accumulating weights of hurt, disappointment, and doubt. We are all broken in different ways, and to claim wholeness as an inalienable right is ridiculous. The fact that I don’t yet love Ashley the way I loved Mandy bothers me, and I seek answers as to WHY.

Maybe it’s because my heart is, at this point, incapable of that sort of love. Mandy will never know the extent of the pain she caused, how her words and actions, coupled together, tore into me. Maybe there are barriers that have arisen to prevent that kind of hurt from coming again. Maybe, in the desire to preserve myself from that kind of pain, I’m subconsciously sealing off my heart. “Better to not love than to love and lose.” Or maybe it’s because part of me—the irrational part—still wonders if Mandy is the one for me, regardless of all that has happened, and therefore my love for her will not wither and die, irrespective of all logic and sanity. My love for her has weathered a good number of storms; it’s stubborn, for better or worse. If that’s the case, all I can do is constantly work at putting her and what we had behind me, shoving her out of my heart the way she shoved me out of hers. I’ve n ever been successful at cutting her out of my heart, but now more than ever it’s a necessary. It’s not just my future that’s at stake; all this directly affects Ashley’s future, too. Then I wonder if the reason I can’t seem to come to that sort of love for Ashley is because Ashley isn’t an answer to prayer. Maybe I’ll never come to know that sort of love for her because we’re not meant to be together over the long haul. We’re super compatible, with the same values, desires, and beliefs in life; but compatibility is no substitute for love. I would choose love over compatibility any day. You can find someone with all the qualities you want in a mate, but if you don’t love them, it’s doomed; it isn’t about finding the person who fits your arbitrary checklist, it’s about finding someone you long to serve, protect, nurture, and cherish, regardless of any amateur “relationship checklist.” And I need to be honest: the love I had for Mandy was cultivated over years of friendship and vulnerability. I didn’t love her when we were at college. I didn’t love her when our communication was limited to emails. I didn’t love her the first time I visited her in Wisconsin. The love grew over time, born out of a deep friendship marked by vulnerability and trust. Ashley and I, we’re still in the beginning stages of getting to know one another. To expect that sort of love after six months may be foolishness. I don’t easily “fall in love,” and though I dream of being a husband and a father, my life isn’t ruled by that desire. I can’t commit to Ashley the way I committed to Mandy, but if I could, would it even be wise? I think not.

I’m an over-thinker, and maybe this is me over-thinking things. I can’t come out of a relationship with a woman I grew to love more than life itself and expect to find that sort of love so easily and without hard work. I could let my fears—the fear that I’m just too broken, that I’m incapable of loving anyone but her, that this relationship is wrong because it’s hard—dictate my actions. But I won’t. I told Ashley that I would work at working through my issues, that I’d be honest with her, and that I wouldn’t run and hide when the temptation to do exactly that feels overwhelming. I promised her that I wouldn’t be the sort to run so easily, and I intend to keep that promise, even when it hurts. If a day comes when I’m convinced that Ashley and I won’t work, I’ll take the blame and the fall. But that day won’t come overnight, and I’ll fight against it, because when you commit to someone, that’s what you do.