The Comfort of Prison

Tired, yet somehow invigorated, the pack of travelers journeyed on as they had for many days.  Stretching on for miles, the caravan of families, elderly, singles, youth and even animals were a sight for sore eyes.  Never before had such a crowd ventured to explore the unknown, particularly with such great hopes and expectation.

They carried with them all that they would need and more -- their personal belongings, family heirlooms, and some even snuck trinkets from the old country to serve as memorial of where they had been.  Their excitement outweighed their trepidation and weariness, and they found strength in supporting each other as a team.  If a widow became low on her water supply, a nearby traveling family gladly gave out of their supply.  When toddlers reached their wits' end, cousins and other relatives would carry them to relieve young mothers of unnecessary burdens.  With the Lord and freedom in the forefront of their minds, the crowd felt unstoppable.

As they drew nearer to the vast sea in front of them, many used the free-moving, natural resource to quickly rinse their feet and other dusty belongings off at the shore.  The leader of the troupe began seeking direction about the best route for travel.  Some just stood in awe of the beauty of God's creation, allowing the roar of the crashing waves to provide a sound of peace at the end of an era of turmoil.

Suddenly, the cacophony of the waves grew louder and louder.  The sound of peace evolved into the sound of fear, as one by one, the children of Israel lifted their eyes from the Red Sea in front of them and turned around to see the chariots of Pharaoh's army quickly approaching behind them.  Feeling distraught, pinned in on every side, and as if all their dreams of freedom were in vain, they began to cry out, "It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness" (Exodus 14:12b, NKJV).

From the outside looking in, it is easy for me to point a finger at the Israelites.  No matter how many times the Lord showed His children His faithfulness or His miraculous, mighty power, they still reached a point of complacency or doubt.  Prior to parting the Red Sea, the Lord demonstrated Himself through the plagues and passover.  After the parting of the Red Sea, the Lord continued to show Himself to by making bitter waters sweet, providing manna from heaven, and creating water out of a rock.  Yet each and every time, His children became overwhelmed and did not believe He would make a way, slapping Him with their words by asking to go back to being slaves in Egypt.

As I point my finger at the faults and ungratefulness of the children of Israel, I can't help but find "three fingers pointing back at me," as the old folks say.  I have my own faults and feelings of ungratefulness that I too need to deal with.

For years, I asked the Lord to take me out of difficult situations and deliver me from harsh dealings.  It took some time, but He finally did.  As I now stand in a new place of freedom, I find that everything seems easy.  Surprisingly, it is the easy that makes me uneasy.  I had grown so accustomed to being mistreated, used, weary, and hardships that it became "normal."  This caused me to build a wall and be my own defense (instead of letting the Lord be my Protector), a false place of security that I was used to.  I thought I was creating a safe refuge for myself, but in reality, I established an emotional prison in which no one could get in and I could not get out.

As I am challenged each day to walk in my new place of freedom, I have a choice.  I can either run with reckless abandon and great expectation through the unfamiliar open doors God has placed before me, or I can look back and long for the comfort of my familiar prison days.  Remembering that I must do something different if I want different results in my life, I throw off the chains in my mind of my prison days and choose to trust the journey the Lord has charted out for me to travel in this season.  His paths are ones of peace, and I find comfort in knowing that wherever I go, He is my pillar, hemmed before and behind me.

"Oh, We're Just Friends": Confessions of a Christian Side Chick

I firmly believe that friendship makes a solid foundation for any successful romantic relationship.  I've adhered to this school of thought for so long that it's a part of my "list." You know, "THE list" every girl has of desired traits in a future spouse.  Now that I'm nearly 31, I've added, tweaked, and deleted items from my list many times, but the component of a "homie lover friend" has always remained constant.

Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe.  Maxine Shaw and Kyle Barker.  Kathleen Kelly and Joe Fox.  Sydney Shaw and Dre Ellis.

Growing up, these were the images of love to shape my view that friends, and even frienemies, make the best lovers.  Whether sitting on the couch with my mother, religiously watching the Anne of Green Gables marathon every summer on PBS or You've Got Mail with tissues in hand, rooting for Max & Kyle's top secret relationship on the short lived series, Living Single, or eagerly awaiting Dre to profess my favorite line in Brown Sugar, "You are the perfect verse, over a tight beat," I have always aspired to have a friendship that evolves into a relationship.

And this ideal did not just stem from the media.  It is something I have repeatedly seen and experienced in real life.  I know and look up to many couples who have been married for decades, all of whom have a close bond of friendship with their spouse.  Also, while attending my conservative Christian college where actively dating was an unspoken taboo, I watched many of my girl friends eventually court and marry guys they had been longtime friends with.  So, I assumed this too would be the path I would take.

I'll never forget the first time I deceitfully uttered those horrible four words, "oh, we're just friends."  As an undergraduate education major, most of my classes were filled with young women, so my interactions with males during school were few and far between.  But one semester, a young man that I sat near in one of my general studies core classes asked me to study with him a couple of times.  And that's when sistas started giving me the side-eye in public and whispering to me, "What's up with you and so-and-so?"  With a smirk I'd coyly answer, "Oh, we're just friends," as if I were speaking some sort of code language.  Translated in Evangelical Christian girl-speak, "oh, we're just friends" really meant, "we hang out a lot, he calls me, sometimes he pays for me, but we haven't defined or talked about our relationship."

Nothing ever panned out from that friendship; it eventually deteriorated once the young man began courting a young lady that he wanted to be more than just friends with and eventually married.  Unfortunately for me, I began to lead a life of constant "friendlationships" and found myself repeating the phrase "oh, we're just friends" effortlessly.  Time and time again, due to my own delusions and insecurities, I would develop friendships with young Christian men, devoting my time, energy and emotions into something that seemingly went nowhere.  Each time, for months I would wait around, making them a priority while I was merely an option.  This could mean taking phone calls at any time of day or night, late night platonic home visits (with nothing sexual occurring), running errands at the drop of the hat, and the like.  In my private time and prayer journals you could find me fervently petitioning God to open their eyes to see me as more than a friend, yet I continued to find myself sitting in the dust when they would seriously pursue and marry someone else.

After years of going around the same mountain and getting the same result, I changed my tune and wrote in my prayer journal, "I want to be with someone who claims me in public."  I was ready to give up the lifestyle of a Christian side-chick.  Shortly after, I found myself in a disastrous monogamous relationship with someone who was very clear with his intentions.  However, due to the rocky nature of the relationship I could not bring myself to publicly claim him and eventually dumped him.  It took me awhile to heal and trust again after that relationship, but the greatest thing I learned from that experience is that if a man is truly interested, there will be no waiting around or second guessing.  HE. WILL. PURSUE.

So now, here I am in my early-thirties, unmarried, yet whole, after learning from the Christian side-chick mistakes of my twenties.  I can count on one hand the number of guy friends I have in my life, some of whom are married and others, single.  Unlike past friendships, the boundaries of these relationships have been clearly defined and these godly men are like brothers that I've never had, seeing that I'm an only child.

Do I still think that I will marry my best friend? Most definitely. Do I still wait around for men to make up their mind about me/we/us? Definitely not.

If anything, thirty has taught me that friendships can be developed while dating and that life is not always what you see in the movies.  I have learned that my aloof and standoffish behavior does not always cause a man to become intrigued by me, as many fictional tales allude.  In fact, I have learned that the best real life love stories often come in unexpected packages.  I believe in friendship.  I believe in love.  I believe in being pursued.  I believe in unexpected packages.  And I believe that one day, it will happen for me.  My Christian side-chick days are over.