Sunday, January 22, 2012

Under Lock and Key

Sometimes I think life would be so much easier if I had a chastity belt...

Confession: I didn't actually know whether or not chastity belts really existed until yesterday. Over the years, I had seen movies or heard jokes making reference to the "virginity protection device" that I always secretly assumed was a myth of medieval culture. Sure, Maid Marion had one, but I'm not sure the Hollywood version of Robin Hood is the most reliable source of historical accuracy.

So, while sipping my Caramel Macchiato at Starbucks yesterday, I decided to do some research...

And I'm here to tell you that YES, the chastity belt DOES actually exist! If you're struggling with a visual at the moment, just picture "panties of steel," secured with a lock and key. Indeed, THE most literal protection a young damsel can get to help ensure her purity. The key to unlock the chastity belt, medieval tradition has it, can only be obtained by a maiden's true love...and even then, only on her wedding night. Wow! What an invention...

Tossing any sort of kinky bondage fantasy aside, think about the practicality of such a thing! The polar opposite of the "Easy-access" crotch-less panty, the "Try-as-you-might-but-you're-not-getting-up-in-here" chastity belt offers fool-proof protection. Not only does it prevent lustful men from entering the sacred territory, but it also has the added benefit of keeping a young maiden's own hands from prematurely exploring the forbidden fruit. Just think of the marketing scheme: Feeling tempted? Fearing assailants? Lock that junk up! HE doesn't get the key until YOU get a ring! The chastity belt: It's easy...so you don't have to be.

Oh, chastity belt! If only you wouldn't look so awkward under my skinny jeans...

Maybe I can just get one for my heart instead. Encased in steel and securely locked up tight, such a device would surely prevent men from stealing it for their own emotional benefit. Like a real chastity belt, I surmise this heart protector could also guard me from myself...keeping me from exposing it or giving it away carelessly. If my heart were kept under lock and key, I could guarantee it to be safely delivered to my husband on our wedding night. "Here," I would say, proudly handing him the key, "My heart has been saved for you alone. Only YOU can unlock it's depth, it's secrets and it's beauty. It is completely pure, soft and unscarred."

Sigh...

Though the chastity belt may be real, there is no such shield for my heart. For a moment, the thought crushes me--There will never be an simple way to navigate the fragility of this most precious part of me. Scripture compels me to "guard it"...to "watch over it with all diligence." Far from a straight-forward task, the command seems a paradox. For in order to live as I am called to (by that very same Book), I need to use it everyday. In order to love, I need to keep it open and vulnerable--thus exposing it to hardening, scarring, even the possibility of shattering. I must protect it, but I cannot keep it under lock and key. God's method is far more complex than this...

Because whether it's worn on my heart or my hips, a chastity belt is just an quick-fix means of compliance--a forced obedience. It requires no self control. No actual overcoming of temptation (by either the one wearing it or the one seeking to be let in). Lacking true soul transformation or mind-renewal, its protection is false, shallow, and ultimately, in vain...

I guess this is why as I have been studying the Scriptural (yet often clouded in Christian-ese) concept of "guarding your heart," there are no easy answers. Like any aspect of spiritual growth and discipleship, mere rule-keeping and "seven-step lists" can never get us any closer to where we want to be. Because if protecting this vital organ meant installing a simple lock-and-key, we would never need to learn maturity. And the Lord so values our maturity, because it is the indication that real change has taken place... 

"No prolonged infancies among us, please," Paul admonishes believers in the fourth chapter of Ephesians, "We'll not tolerate babes in the woods, small children who are an easy mark for impostors. God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love—like Christ in everything. "

Maturity, however, comes when we are given the freedom to choose...and actually taught how to choose wisely. When we are simply restrained, we are robbed of the opportunity to learn just how to exercise self-control. Like the time my Dad decided to put a timer on our TV so that my sister and I couldn't watch it until 5:30 (theoretically allowing us enough time to get our homework done before dinner). The timer, however, was a short-lived experiment, as it didn't teach us any discipline...other than to learn how to pick the lock on my parents door in order to shut the timer off ;) (Hahahaha...and we were the "good kids!"). As highly as you might like to regard human nature, there is no denying that so-called "guards" do little in the way of preventing evil. In fact, since our sinful selves gravitate towards the very things that threaten to destroy us, we shouldn't be surprised when we find ourselves intentionally breaking the guards that were designed to protect us. 

The only way we come to truly value boundaries (God-implemented guards and protectors, like the commands of Scripture) is when we train ourselves to discern good from evil--and to pro-actively choose the good. That training is otherwise known as discipleship--seeking daily to know and become more and more like Christ. And incidentally, allowing Him to fill our hearts appears to be the Bible's #1 prescription for guarding them. How curious, because in all my years of church-going, that was never what I was taught...

From women's Bible studies to Christian singles handbooks, I had always been told that guarding my heart meant keeping it closed up, hidden, and essentially...unused. Whether I was innocently crushing or seriously contemplating a relationship, every Christian female in my life warned me to keep my guard up: To refuse to be affected deeply by another man..and to keep myself from affecting him in a lasting way. Whether intended or not, what that teaching really taught me was that the only way to ensure my heart's purity and wholeness was to refuse to take a risk...

Ideas have consequences, friends. That philosophy guided my actions for years...yet I'm torn as to whether or not its outcome was entirely good. I know all the lyrics to "Independent Women" and how to go for years without shedding a tear. But surely "guarding your heart" means more than this...


(To Be Continued)

Monday, January 16, 2012

"Careful Love?" No Such Thing...

Note: God has been stirring some intense ideas in mind/heart lately and I'm in the midst of developing a new post about the balance of guarding your heart vs. keeping your heart open to love. As I've been writing that post, I was reminded of a blog I wrote nearly six years ago on this same topic. Re-reading it this morning, I got fresh revelation/confirmation of some of the ideas coming in the next post. Thought I'd share...give you a preview of what's to come :)


"And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing"

- 1 Corinthians 13:2

My friend Jamie once told me a story about being in love--specifically the intense pain that one feels when love is not reciprocated.  In my naive, college-freshman mind, I questioned the authenticity of the love about which she spoke. I told her that I believed love was not truly love unless it was mutual. One-sided love, I claimed, was merely admiration. 

Needless to say, I had a huge misunderstanding about love and how this powerful force comes to flourish in one's heart.  Having known pain, hurt and disappointment from a young age, I grew into a young woman who chose (more often than not) to keep people at a distance.  In the few instances where I did make myself vulnerable towards someone else (amidst silly high school romances and college "friendlationships"), I always came away feeling ashamed of my attempts to express the deepest longings of my heart. Thus, as I sought to diligently "guard my heart" (as every good, young Christian girl is taught to do), I couldn't conceive of a more practical method than closing it off and shunning the risk that getting to know someone intimately always necessitates. Better to stay safe and "protected," than to end up hurt and rejected...

Here was the false dichotomy I created in my mind: Either I could give my heart away and choose to love when things were "just right"...or..I could take a risk and choose to love when there was no guarantee of reciprocation. Is there even a choice here? After all, the former seemed to provide a foolproof solution to heartbreak and the latter held the glaringly obvious possibility of no reward. Yet, what I didn't realize is that the possibility of no reward...in other words, risking...was the only choice I had. Because even when love is reciprocated and the situation appears idyllic, no human love is perfect. Because we are not perfect. Here on earth, love always involves risk. There is no such thing as "careful" love...

There's a brilliant line tucked slyly within the otherwise cliche script of a sappy chick flick that expresses exactly the way I felt in my younger years regarding openness to love (and my lack thereof). Today, it challenges me more than ever...

"There's a part of me that wants to let him in but then I feel myself put this wall up and I don't understand why. Maybe that's what strikes me most about [him]. That despite everything he's suffered he can still look at life in the most uncomplicated way. I've never known that kind of faith. It makes me sad that people like [him] who have lost everything can still be open to love while I, who have lost nothing, am not."

That truly is a wonderful thing--to have loved and lost, but to keep your heart open to loving again.

God is so beautifully ironic. Perhaps it is His way of redeeming my closed and scared self of my past that the Lord has placed this peculiar call on my life having to do specifically with love and honesty.  He has challenged me to live a life of vulnerability--to open up my heart, to allow myself to feel the full weight of every emotion I experience and to risk possible (surely inevitable) pain for sharing myself and loving another person in such an intense way. 

As I humbly seek to live out this challenge, I have found myself truly loving more people than I ever have before in my life.  In many ways, it is an incredible experience; living with a constant desire to serve, encourage and fight for people because of the love I have for them. Yet even now, as I sit and reflect about the people that I have come to love so deeply within this past month, I am struck with the pain of knowing that everything I feel is not necessarily mutual. And that makes my heart hurt-- a very literal aching in my chest--to know that my love is not returned with the same intensity.

In moments like these, it is very easy for me to question myself and have doubts about the nature of my feelings: "What's wrong with me?  Why do I love so intensely?  If I love people who don't love me back, did I choose the 'wrong' people to love?" 

Where did these questions come from?  I know that I am not the only one who has been challenged in this way. When relationships end, so many of us question the authenticity of the love we experienced. Staring at the shattered pieces that surround us after rejection, we suddenly feel guilty and about the nature and depth of our love. How could I have been so foolish to give my heart away? I should have guarded it better...

Blame it on the theories we unconsciously develop from movies and love songs.  Blame it on the fact that we try to put this massive, mind-bending concept of love into a box--putting time limits and restraints on it ("You can't truly love someone unless you've known them for this many months" or "You can't be 'in love' with someone who you aren't in a relationship with").  Blame it on the fact that we constantly judge other's emotions--thinking that we know better than they do if what they are experiencing is genuine.  Blame it on what you will, but I find it tragic that for so long I believed the lie that the only form of true love is a mutual love.  I am ashamed that I told Jamie that a one-sided love was not genuine.  Because perhaps being able to love someone without the promise of their love in return is the greatest example of love that there is...

This thought frees me and comforts me deeply: To know that love does not have to be reciprocated in order to be real.  And who personified this type of loving better than Jesus--a man who risked loving so passionately and freely--all the while knowing that those whom He cared for so deeply and poured His life into would abandon Him in the midst of His suffering.  Jesus could have distanced himself or chose to give away love selectively--only to those who were guaranteed to return it and make the investment "worthwhile." But He didn't. Instead, He became our most incredible example of "un-careful love"...

The greatest commandments that guide and sustain our lives can be summed up in two words: To LOVE. And to honor that command, we must push past the fear that to do so will break us. To love is to risk being hurt...but we must choose to love anyway.

Because freely and un-carefully loving is the only way to truly live...