Love

The Resurrection Arc.

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Hey fiction buffs! You’ve heard of character arcs before, but did you know there’s different kinds?

Yeah, probably if you read or watch any TV show that’s fictional, you knew that. I’m simply being dramatic.

You might know of arcs (and for you non-buffs, an arc is how a character or plot develops from one point, usually an immature one, to another, usually a better, wiser one. Typically the arc is what shows us the point of the whole story, but there are negative arcs that show one good guy turning bad, or a good guy slowly giving up on their cause. These are the bad example arcs that are meant to be a warning.) But have you heard of a Resurrection Arc?

Most arcs follow a pattern and this one does too. It’s actually pretty widely used, but since it is often misused, and people are now knocking it, I thought I’d write a defense of it.

All arcs are meant to change the characters and show them something they did not see before. Some arcs are a part of the plot and the characters learn by dealing with the challenges of that part. That’s what category I put a resurrection arc into.

A lot of things kick off arcs. The most famous is getting a challenge like being chosen for something, or the sadder common catalyst is a character losing someone close to them. Sometimes just witnessing a tragedy is enough to do it, other times the character has to lose their soulmate for their arc to begin.

However, there’s another really cool thing that kicks of some arcs. And it’s a resurrection. A resurrection can happen one of two ways. Either it’s a character literally coming back from the dead, or from being almost dead, or they just thought they were and it turns out they weren’t; or something else can be restored to a character that they felt they lost. In fiction especially this can mean a gift or power, or it can mean a belief in something they had lost faith in. It’s popular now for a memory to also be something that helps a character in this way.

In older stories resurrection is often just straight up someone’s coming back to life. This theme appears in fairy tales way more that we realize. Often it’s intertwined with redemption. Many of Anderson’s lesser known stories involve resurrection, and even his most famous ones that have had those elements removed in the retelling.

In modern fiction Death has an oddly compelling presence. Take “The Fault in Our Stars,” or almost any dystopia fiction now. Death is everywhere, often very young people are obsessed with it. (Funny that it’s often older people writing this stuff.) I always loved life, I was happy when nobody died. I considered “The Lion King” a sad movie, (and that part still is.) But of course, Mufasa isn’t really gone, and that can be part of a resurrection arc. Realizing that death isn’t so powerful. It’s why you won’t see this arc in the death-shadowed stories I just mentioned, unless it’s in some twisted, unholy way. Frankenstein’s monster is no example of resurrection, just to be clear.

Life wins out in the end, and love. That’s the message of resurrection arcs in a nutshell. But the complaint, which I’m sick of hearing, is that they don’t create lasting stakes.

Since the Avengers franchise took off, fans have been growing dissatisfied with happy, everyone’s alive, stories (like they don’t all hate it when their friendly neighborhood Spiderman gets knocked off, please.) While I find the constant whining about it to be stupid, I do note that there’s something to be said for making things a bit more realistic.

It’s not that no one dies that really bugs me, it’s that no one gets hurt for very long, no one loses anything in their lives, and no one seems to be affected for longer than two films by any traumatic experience. Also I fail to see character growth even when they are.

In truth, whether characters live or die has nothing to do with depth. Action flicks that kill off henchmen by the dozens aren’t known for being deep. And Chick flicks that don’t kill anyone, or else do it in a more drawn out, romantic way, aren’t necessarily shallow. The Notebook is dumb for most of the movie, but the ending always gets to me because it is saying something profound about love.

That said, I think people who knock resurrection arcs are missing their potential. It’s not always a cheap cop-out to have a character not stay dead. In fact, often it’s a very good catalyst for growth in both them, and everyone else.

When a characters is resurrected, everyone has to reconsider what life and death means to them. They have to ask themselves what they are willing to sacrifice, and what they aren’t. But most of all, it changes the dynamics of how they see the antagonists. Maybe there are things more powerful than whatever the evil stands for.

As for the character who comes back themselves, they get a chance to change things about their lives that maybe only losing them gave them the clarity to do. Or they impart some wisdom on the other characters that they couldn’t before. Resurrection means restoration.

If we no longer like that, it is because we have grown more hopeless. It’s more cool now to just accept the crap in you life and deal with it, then it is to hope for a change. People encourage you to give up on hoping for others to change, for things to turn around. Be the force, they say. Well, that’s fine in its place. But what about when your force isn’t enough?

What about when all the kick-rear skills in the world won’t save you? What about when you’re losing heart and nothing else will help? What about when someone simply can’t save themselves?

Resurrection is what solves this, and nothing else can. It’s a restoring of life and hope and faith to someone who had lost heart. It’s the only thing that makes redemption fully possible. Because though a death may redeem someone, it only sticks if life comes out of it.

Resurrection, in the end, is what breeds humility. What engraves the inevitability of our own need for someone to intervene on our behalf into our souls. By overcoming mortality, it reminds us of it.

It’s not cheap. It’s often the hardest thing to do well.

I for one will never get tired of this arc, until next time–Natasha.

What really matters.

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Well it’s been quite the week for me. On Sunday my grandpa passed away. Now this weekend is his funeral.

I  never knew that loss felt cold before. But it does. I felt cold after I heard the news. I’d expected it for a while, he was not doing well right before. He hadn’t been doing well for a decade. Especially the past four years or so. In fact, that he lived as long a he did was a mystery to his doctors, and my family’s opinion, it was a miracle. He lived off prayer, so many people prayed for him.

The show I mentioned before, RWBY, has a song about loss titled “Cold.” It’s pretty sad. And pretty accurate. When someone dies, do you cease to love them? No.

To me it’s more like a connection was lost. Like your spiritual cellphone now is out of service. But I know some people don’t feel that way. They still feel connected to people they’ve lost. I’m not sure why that is. Losing people has not made me an expert on it. C. S. Lewis wrote about feeling his wife’s nearness in “A Grief Observed.” He knew she still continued to exist.

Some folk think you can talk to the dead and they’ll hear you. I don’t think that, but I understand the need to have final words. So few of us get to be with loved ones when they pass on. I felt like if I had had the chance, I would ahve felt better. Though I did get to see him the very day before, so that was a mercy.

I don’t have a lot of very close memories with my grandpa, he had such ill health, and lived too far away, and he was not very good at connecting with people. But I did get to go out with him on his boat once, which was fun. And he took us around museums and a fishing expo once. I think we went to an aquarium once also. Before his health got really bad. He also paid for my braces, so I owe the fact that I have good teeth now to him.

He was always kind to me. As I got older I found out he was not perfect. None of my grandparents are of course. But I always chose to think of him more as how he was to me. His best self. I prefer to see people that way.

I notice that families like to dredge up old stuff. And I’ve been there, and I’m getting really disillusioned with it. It’s such a waste of time, as my grandmother liked to say. We all do dumb things when we’re young and immature. I’m fortunate to have realized this now and not when I’m 80.

What really counts, as a couple of good songs I know “It happens in a blink” and “Give a little love”, both point out, is not the dumb things we’ve done, but the things we did to love other people. The Bible says that some of us will do little, some of us will do none, and some of us will do much. The parable of the Talents, or when Paul speaks of our works being tested by fire. The point really isn’t how much we do, but that we do things out of love.

Whatever else anyone could say of my grandpa (and all of us could have plenty of things said of us that we wouldn’t like, couldn’t we?) he did love me and his other grandkids and he did things for us that we couldn’t pay him back for. He did help out my parents when we were down on our finances. He did try to take care of my grandmother. And that’s what we’ll remember more about him, or at least that’s what I want to dwell on. No human being is perfect, if we focus on our mistakes, that’s all we’ll ever see. If we focus on the things we did right, at least there is love.

 

 

 

Until next time–Natasha.

Pure Love and the human condition.

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Hi, sorry I’ve neglected you guys. I was not feeling good this week and I had a lot of homework to catch up on. Thankfully my books arrived!

I’ve had the time, however, to get hooked on a new show, it’s called RWBY. I don’t often say this about anime anything, but I recommend it a lot, though it is not finished yet, and if you watch, be prepared to wait a few years for the conclusion because each season takes about a year to come out.

But two seasons was enough to sell me on it, season 3 ripped my heart out, and seasons 4 and 5 continued to blow my mind. Season 6 comes out next month.

A little summary before I get to my real point: RWBY is basically a superhero team set in a fantasy world with heavy spiritual undertones. Or even overtones sometimes. It features a host of likable, deep, smart, and none cliche heroes who you actually want to imitate though you wouldn’t want to be them per sec because they have problems. Not petty issues, but actual life challenges. I’m pretty sure this show is aimed at older teens. The show features villains who you will utterly despise even though their motivations are explained to you, which is a plus in my book since I never liked sympathizing with evil characters. They are not two dimensional, but the show makes it very clear they are evil and you do not want to be like them.

But that’s enough about the show. What I really want to talk about is the contrast between the show’s view of human nature, and the one I’m getting in my Critical Thinking Class. I don’t know who picked my curriculum, but it’s been the most depressing stuff I’ve read in a long time. and I just read Fahrenheit 451. Each short story or novella has featured the theme of human nature, I guess it’s the point we’re focusing on for these weeks.

According to these authors, human beings are cruel, unfeeling, ungrateful, willing to abandon loved ones as soon as they become an inconvenience, and on the brink of insanity constantly.

I know some cynical person might look at that list and say “That sounds about right.” Yeah, that person might not like what I’m going to say.

THIS IS WRONG! WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

I won’t name all my sources here because I think you’re better off not reading them, but the highlights are a story about a man turning into a cockroach and becoming a monster to his family; a woman killing her boyfriend and committing necrophilia; a man with a mentally disturbed employee who starves himself to death after becoming a nuisance to everyone around him; and a man who removes his wife’s one blemish because he can’t bear imperfection and kills her by doing so.

Now if all those sound like something you’d never want to read, be glad you aren’t required to for the course. I actually enjoyed a chapter about straight logic more than I enjoyed any of those.

I do come up with dramatic things when I write my fiction, but I stick mainly to what I’ve seen on TV, or what I observes in the spiritual way of things. You could argue the case for all the above stories having spiritual connotations, but they aren’t ones worth being talked about.

The Bible says of the corrupt that it is shameful to even speak of the things which they do in secret. I don’t think it means that you never expose wickedness. But you should be really careful what you talk about just for the sake of conversation or discussion. No one should bring up the darkest parts of humanity for table talk.

By contrast, RWBY, unlike all the stories I read, has the bad and good sides of people both. It’s most notable example is Pyrrha Nikos, who is hands down one of the best characters I ever saw on a show. Pyrrha demonstrates something that I have seen in stories I’ve read by C. S. Lewis, Louisa May Alcott, and Francis Burnette (A little Princess and The Secret Garden.) Stories like Heidi, The Enchanted April, The Bronze Bow, Anne of Green Gables, or even comics like Mr. Miracle and Spiderman, all contain exceptional people. People who, as George MacDonald would say, demonstrate “the common good uncommonly developed.” It’s my rule of thumb that if you find no true love in a story, then you find no truth. You’ll never separate those two things with any degree of honesty. You have to search for that one character or theme that demonstrates love, pure love.

Pure Love is an ideal for human beings. While it is possible for us to have it, it takes much growth and much sacrifice on our part. It is true that few of us are willing to undergo that kind of suffering. I could describe Pure Love as a concept, but I prefer using characters. Characters work better than real people in this case because unless you’re fortunate enough to know someone like them, most of us haven’t met anyone who exudes that kind of love all the time. A character is someone all of us could potentially see and hopefully understand.

Pyrrha Nikos struck me because I could never catch her doing anything selfish, no matter what scene she was in. All she ever seems to want is to connect with people and help them. I have seen a few characters like that, but they got ruined in the end by irresponsible writing. Surely I am not the only one tired of show writers growing cynical about their own characters and dooming them by violating the characters own convictions for the sake of the plot…ick.

The point is Pyrrha and the others stand up for what is right and don’t want to just stand by and let bad things happen. And I believe there are people like that in the world.

You probably won’t find them on TV all that much because unfortunately, the reason these stories are on my curriculum is because as a culture we have turned to the dark and the depressing, the antihero and the straight up bad guy. Our world is sick. But, that does not mean we do not have the healers in it. I don’t know anyone who always radiates love except Jesus, but I do know I want to be that person. I have a long way to go. But because I believe God transforms us, I believe I can get there.

The short stories made me feel like garbage, selfish scum of the earth, and that was not based in any reality or likelihood that I would do what the people in the stories did. I can honestly say I wouldn’t. But these stories don’t make me sit back and ponder my life choices as much as they make me think “people suck, at least the ones who wrote this trash did.”

RWBY shocked me with it’s real look at what it’s like to be in a war against evil, but that shock made me remember values I’ve been forgetting for some time now. And it made me want to live up to them again. A part of me was beginning to think having pure love was impossible, but I was reminded that I sure as heck should keep trying anyway.

It’s a pretty pass when an internet show has a better grasp of reality than literature in a Critical Thinking Class, but one cannot disregard humble messengers. Oddly enough, people who expect to be taken seriously the least can often put out the most worthwhile material, because who do they have to impress?

I guess my closing thought is, surround yourself not with what seems the most hard look at life, but with the one that strengthens your values and makes you want to be a better person. That’s the stuff worth engaging in.

Until next time–Natasha.

The difference between men and women-1

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I’ve spent years trying to figure this one out and I finally have my answer: I don’t know what it is.

Well, I do and I don’t.

I can’t understand why people ever started saying men and women are equal or the same, and I really don’t know why they say “a girl can do anything a boy cand o.”

My dad always responds to that by saying “except pee standing up.”

Guys laugh at that and girls roll their eyes.

I could think of a few other things men can do that women can’t…and vice versa.

You’d be surprised how many men don’t even know what a menstrual cycle is, other than it makes girls super emotional.

And not all girls, and not all the time, I only get emotional sometimes. Other time sI hardly notice.

You know I find that if I pick any one trait and think “men are more this than women” I immediately have a few examples come to my mind of men who defy that generalization.

My dad is by far the most emotional person in my family, my mom might go through a whole week or month without yelling more than once or twice, my dad can rarely go through two days.

My mom is one of those people who smile more than laugh, my dad laughs all the time even in negative conversations.

Men are supposedly better drivers and better at math, my mom beats my dad at both those things.

My parents are both exceptional anyway, but that’s just the two of them. I know other boys and girls who defy stereotypes. I know guys who like to knit or sew or cook. I know girls like me who prefer self defense to ballet. That’s not so uncommon anymore.

The point is, if I pick any one thing, I can’t generalize. Both men and women participate in every activity you could think of. From the best things to the worst. Some things it would be nice to rule men out or women. It would be nice if it was true that women don’t sleep around and go from man to man like they were sampling them, and that men are never emotionally needy and clingy. But it’s not.

If I listen to any given conversation around my campus I’ll have proof of this. Boys can be just as emotional and annoying about it as girls, and girls can frankly be just as inconsiderate as boys are more reputed to be in relationships.

And boys can be sensitive and caring,  I don’ know why every genre except chick flicks and the rare kids’ movie seems to not get this. In some cultures a man might be more likely to cry than a woman in some situations. It used to be unladylike for a woman to demonstrate too many motions in public, now it;s weird for a man to do that.

Social fads never mean much anyway, people are too diverse.

I can’t trace he difference between men an women to any hobby or personality trait in particular. Humor can be one consistent difference, but not always. I laugh when people get slugged in movies if i feel it was merited. Even though violence isn’t supposed to be funny to girls.

Sometimes I wonder if I am mannish because I like things girls aren’t supposed to like that much. But I don’t consider myself odd given that I grew up with no brothers and a father who’s main way to enjoy playing with his kids was to buy them war and weapon themed toys. When you’re a girl and your dad is into very masculine stuff, you adapt and become flexible.

Now, true to the expectation, my mom couldn’t care less about that stuff, so I ended up with diverse interests. I am one of many girls or boys that did.

It’s not like boys never learn to do more homemaking stuff from their mom, or even their dad.

This isn’t about what we do, really, it’s not about how we feel. Men and women feel pretty much the same about things. The only difference I notice, and this difference is slight at best, is men seem to feel embarrassed for feeling as much as they do and they deny it, giving the wrong impression that they don’t care.

While girls only feel embarrassed about certain feelings.

Guys will downplay excitement, enthusiasm, sadness, and compassion into “guy” terms. Actions, and short sentences. (Usually, but you’ll have your Shakespearean poetic fellow now and again.)

Girls tend not to downplay positive feelings to each other, they might around guys. But they will downplay negative feelings a lot of time.

I think being bubbly and glad is perceived as a girly thing, so after a certain age most men drop it and hide their good feelings, while women only bring out those feelings, or else resort to being business like.

Again, this is still subject to personal choice. There are exceptions. That’s the only general rule I’ve seen to really apply however.

I will give men a tip here, with girls if you don’t express positive feelings she’s going to assume you feel negatively, or worse indifferent. Indifference is worse, at least to me. If you’re negative I can fight with you at least. Anything is better than stagnation. Guys usually think women are reading into it when they assume the worst, but that’s imply how we communicate.

Conversely, I’ve learned that if I have a spat with my dad I’ll fix things a lot sooner by doing something then by just saying I’m sorry.

I think this boils down to women wanting to know you feel remorse, and men wanting to know you’ll actually take responsibility for your actions.

However, I still say we all have both, it’s just which one it takes to seal the deal that differs.

That said, the real difference between men and women isn’t something you can diagnose. And people are trying to diagnose it so they can cure it.

I don’t care if men are different from me, if they’ll just stop griping about it. I’d hope they feel the same way. God made us different.

You see, our differences are something in us grater than the sum of our parts. It’s not whether you wear make up or wear cologne that makes you a man or a woman. It’s something in your soul.

One reason i don’t believe that people can be transgender. As I just said, emotionally you cant’ really pinpoint the difference between the sexes, it’s soulful, or spiritual if you will. We kind of just sense that it’s there. If you interact with a man or a woman for nay length of time, you’ll feel the difference.

Ironically gay people may actually be more likely to realize men and women are very different, they’ve just decided they don’t like one or the other.

 

 

 

The Unimaginable.

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I recently was introduce to the Musical Hamilton. What sold me on it completely was the end. I actually came near to crying, the tears were in my eyes. I know every girl says that about every movie or book with a sappy story in it. But that wasn’t what got to me. Up until the lat half or so of Act 2, I thought it was pretty good. But when Phillip died it got serious, and then this song. “It’s quiet uptown” got to me. I would definitely say listen to it because it’s better with music. But check out these lyrics, especially at the bottom:

 

Angelica: There are moments that the words don’t reach. There is suffering too terrible to name. You hold your child as tight as you can, and push away the unimaginable. The moments when you’re in so deep it feels easier to just swim down.

Hamilton: I spend hours in the garden. I walk alone to the store. And it’s quiet uptown. I never like the quiet before. I take the children to church on Sunday. A sign of the Cross at the door. And I pray. That never used to happen before.

You knock me out, I fall apart.

Company: Can you imagine?

Hamilton: Look at where we are. Look at where we started. I know I don’t deserve you Eliza. But hear me out. That would be enough.

If I could spare his life. If I could trade his life for mine. He’d be standing here right now. And you would smile, and that would be enough. I don’t pretend to know the challenges we’re facing. I know there’s no replacing what we’ve lost. And you need time. But I’m not afraid. I know who I married. Just let me stay here by your side. That would be enough.

Company: If you see him in the street walking by her side, talking by her side. Have pity.
Hamilton: Eliza do you like it uptown, it’s quiet uptown.
Company: He is trying to do the unimaginable. See them walking in the park, long after dark. Taking in the sights of the city.

Hamilton: Look around, look around Eliza. 

Company: They are trying to do the unimaginable.
Angelica: There are moments that the words don’t reach. There is a grace too powerful to name. We push away what we can never understand. We push away the unimaginable. They are standing in the garden. Alexander by Eliza’s side. She takes his hand.

Company:

Forgiveness. Can you imagine?
Forgiveness. Can you imagine?
If you see him in the street, walking by her side, talking by her side, have pity. They are going through the unimaginable.

The last part with Angelica and the Company is so true. It stuck me as profound.
In case you haven’t been caught up in the Hamilton craze, let me explain why this is so big. Hamilton cheated on his wife. It’s was a long messed up story, but he ended up publishing his letters with the woman to the public to clear his name. Very, very stupid. And the man was a genius in other respects. (There are some pretty scathing songs directed at him int he musical. And the fans get pretty hard on him too.)
Then Hamilton’s son got in duel, much like his father would after him, and was shot by the other man while he also fired into the air. The Hamiltons moved uptown after that, hence the song.
Eliza we know carried on Hamilton’s legacy after he died, for the next fifty years. She collected letters about him, she started an orphanage. She wanted him to be remembered. She had to know that would meant he affair would be remember too. As it has been. But clearly, she forgave him. Actually it might’ve been sooner then the song suggests, or later. But they had another kid.
Funny, whenever I hear some great forgiveness story on YouTube, I find in the comments that people can’t understand how they could forgive that. It can be fictional, often it’s real life. But either type of forgiveness blows people’s minds.
And it occurs to me how little we encourage it in each’s other. On TV people are petty, and rarely ever let go of event he stupidest of offences. They nag each other. How many of us are imitating that pattern? I know I am far too often.
And I struggle with forgiveness over really serious things. I am committed to justice. When it comes time to let that go, I fine it hard.
 Christians are told to forgive everyone for each offense and show love.
Forgiveness is hard enough even when you’ve been raised to believe in it. But I think it is made harder when as a culture we feed on vengeance.
In entertainment, and the news. In politics. Of someone smears our candidate of choice, we smear theirs. If they talk bad about our party, we talk bad about theirs.
It may surprise you to know I see more blame on My own party’s side in this. Republicans and Conservatives. I think the Left does it too. Possibility more than we do. But I expect that from them. They always have. What shocks me sometimes is the contempt Conservatives show, and the lack of difference between how we talk about them.
True, we acknowledge some of them mean well, but that’s about it.
But political differences are a lot easier to forgive then something like cheating. Probably someone who reads this has been cheated on. It may make you livid to have it suggested that forgiveness is even possible. OR maybe you wish it was. 
This one puts it well. Grace and recovery form grief are both unimaginable to us. I can’t imagine the kind of grief losing a child would be. I can try, but I know I get only a small part of the picture. My Aunt and Uncle have gone through this experience now. They have been quiet about it.
But anger in understandable to, and necessary for a time. The question is, and the question Hamilton is asking himself in this song is can the anger eventually pass? Can it be quiet? And can there be forgiveness?
I understand the outrage over what Hamilton did, and I would find it hard to get past myself. But a lot of couples do. I will say this, a man may make that kind of mistake, but not be worthless. It depends on the man. It depends on the woman too.
That kind of broken trust is hard to repair. But as someone who has been on the receiving end of not being forgiven for a long time, (as many of you have no doubt,) I can’t help but feel some sympathy for Hamilton. 
Until we kill the desire, all of us at one time yearn to be forgiven and to be set free from the guilt of everything we do wrong. Eventually we let that die because we give up hope.
It’s an odd pattern that people who hate God or who give up on Him, tend to not have forgiven themselves or feel forgiven. 
Anger at God for the things that have been done to us it nearly always built on the anger of not feeling forgiven. Which is fear, really, not anger.
Because in the Bible, and in the testimonies I’ve heard, it is always after we’ve been forgiven that we can forgive.
I think we hold grudges as a kind of covering for our own nakedness. So we can say that though we did wrong, we were wronged too, so there should be pity.
That’s not what the Company in this song is talking about when they say to pity Hamilton.
They mean, pity a man who is trying to redeem himself, or trying to accept grace. Because we do hide from what we don’t understand. especially grace.
People have been killed for it. People who forgive have been hated by those they’ve forgiven.
Yet the guilty often only change after  they know they’ve been forgiven. When we get a blank slate, suddenly we feel we can rewrite our story.
Grace is unimaginable, more so than grief, because we live in pain easily, we live in freedom with great difficulty.
But what I love is that int he song, and apparently in history, it happened. Eliza did extend grace. She was a spiritual woman we know.
I guess the only appropriate way for me to end this is by telling you the good news: Jesus offers forgiveness. And maybe you don’t feel it, but you do want it. Or you did once, and it’s just buried.  Maybe it seems to good to be true to you. (Skepticism is built off that feeling) but it’s true. All you have to do is ask him for it. And follow him.
Maybe you have already done that, but do it again. We all need to revisit that often.
And if there is someone who had done the unimaginable to you, there is a chance to forgive them. They will never deserves it. That’s why we can’t understand it. But thank God, we don’t get what we deserve.  The bigger the offense, the more beautiful it is when it’s finally washed away.
Until Next time–Natasha.

Being Possessive.

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I know I don’t post on Sundays, but my day of rest has really been Saturday, so I thought I’d make an exception.

Something has caught my attention about when I’ve gotten crushes. I’ve had a handful, some girls seem to stop having them after high-school, others have them in their thirties. I  am not here to speculate as to why. Girls like boys. End of story.

But what having a crush can do to you is another matter. It feels great. But I would not be the first by a long shot to say it can also be frustrating. I am sure boys must feel the same way. I just don’t here them talk about it. Because of course, why would they tell me?

I’ve gathered from other girls and from my own experience that a crush can be the sweetest torture there is. It drives you crazy but you don’t want it to stop.

There’s something about being infatuated with someone else that somehow enables you to be focused on someone other than you and forget your own problems, while still being selfish.

A crush is rarely anything like real love. It tends to come with a blindness to the other person’s faults and a belief that they would be just as blind to yours if they ever noticed you. You want them to, but the idea scares you to death also.

Sometimes with more thoughtful people, a crush is like love. They may truly respect the object of their affections and wish them well, and even feel that the person has a right to make up their own mind.

But that’s rare. Most of my crushes were because I was lonely and didn’t have a lot of friends. I tended to get them when I was going through difficult emotional transitions. In a way, I think crushes are a coping mechanism. Perhaps a God-given one. It is preferable to other mechanisms. But crushes are more addictive than heroine. You may try not to think of them, but it’s really hard.

Some people advise you not to nurse it. That can work. Sometimes I think just letting it run its course will get you over it faster. But if you know you get obsessed, that’s not the best idea.

Girls handle it differently. Some have no shame in admitting their feelings, even to the boy. Others deny it consistently.

I find crushes inconvenient. They distract me from the things I need to get done, and the ministries I serve in. I have a penchant for crushing on guys who work with kids (some of you ladies know what I’m talking about.) You can imagine that gets distracting.

I think crushes help keep us from feeling bored and like our lives are empty. But that’s a false kind of feeling.

Or is it? Perhaps even puppy love is a kind of love that makes life worth living. It’s normal to get a crush, it shows we are capable of caring about someone else. If nothing else, crushes are rarely just physical for girls. Even if they are often inexplicable. We don’t know why we like a particular fellow.

But what this brings out in me that I don’t like is a kind of possessive behavior. I’m bringing this up because from what I’ve heard this goes into dating and even marriage relationships. (Especially marriage.)

This feeling that you deserve more of the other person’s time and energy than anyone else does. In marriage, to a degree, that can be true. Some things should be special between you. But in dating and especially in crushes, it’s just not right. Jealousy over someone who might not even like you is foolish. Not that that ever helps. Jealousy is not often connected with reason.

God did tell Eve “you will have desire for your husband and he will rule over you.” I don’t think he meant sexual desire.

It would be easy enough not to be ruled by men if we didn’t want them around so much, wouldn’t it ladies. But don’t get a big head guys, you need us desperately.

Frankly maybe God was being merciful when he cursed us with that. We do need each other, but humans are so selfish by nature that if it wasn’t for that desire, maybe we wouldn’t stick together.

Still, ideally as a Christian, we learn to love people the way God does, not for our selfish desires. And where does that put a Christian girl with a crush, or any other girl who wants more than the norm?

The hard answer is that it’snot right to indulge selfish thoughts on purpose. We daydream, sometimes without intending to, and I get that. But we all know when we’re going too far. Imagining that person devoted exclusively to us.

Maybe I have issues, because I cant really imagine that anymore. I don’t think I want it. At 19, I think I realize that if someone is obsessed with you alone, he or she has no higher purpose or calling in their lives. And why would  I want someone like that? I don’t intend to be that person.

It’s important for the Christian to ask themselves how much of what they want satisfied in their crush is something God is meant to satisfy. Unconditional love? One man in a hundred might have it. But he’ll never have as much as God. He can’t. Any more than you can.

Ladies, we need to remember that men are no better than we are. How many selfish things do we do each day, each week, each year? Some men are better than their women. God bless them. But they are still selfish. All people are selfish. Some of us just have learned to not give into it often. I hope to be that person someday.

When you daydream about your man, ask yourself, would you like this guy, knowing if you were together he would do selfish and inconsiderate things? He might do them all  the time, at worst every day, or if you’ve got an exceptional one, he might do them once in a while. But he’ll do them. And it’ll make you cry.

And not to leave men out, your girl, she’ll be blind to your feelings and do things without considering if it bothers you. Maybe she’s too distracted by her problems to realize it. Likely it’s an accident. (If it’s not, dump her.)

My mom is one of the most unselfish people I know, she does things that irritate me still.

This is no reason to give up on men or women. We would be hypocritical to do so. But we would be delusional to thinking it won’t happen.

And even though you might think “it’s just a crush.” You want to watch how you think when you crush, because that’s the base of how you view romance. And romance is not always fine words and thought out presents.

Hallmark gets that wrong.

Romance is when your girlfriend doesn’t complain about your bad habits to her friends even when it drives her nuts. It’s when your boyfriend changes his plans because you’re having a bad day. It’s when your wife makes you dinner after working all day herself, when your husband does the dishes after a hard day.

At least I think so. Candy and hearts is fine and can be very thoughtful at the right moment. But it’s not real. Not without foundation. That’s what I’m trying to say.

–Natasha.