Laura Ferris

Was Will Das Weib?

— Originally published in print // Permalink

O ne afternoon in June, I grabbed lunch with the college pastor at my church to catch up and to seek his advice. Heading into my senior year, I had been thinking about my history of romantic misadventures and what this meant for my future relationships. I had come to a conclusion.

I told him the story of the past three years. The first time a boy broke my heart I was nineteen years old; it was springtime, but other than that it wasn’t very exciting. I hadn’t liked him as much as I liked the idea of having a boyfriend, we weren’t very compatible, yet I let my whimsical nature and boredom get the better of me anyway. Disgusted by the situation, I spent a summer reading Heidegger and Kierkegaard, styling myself as a Christian existentialist and a hopeless romantic. I then proceeded to fall in love with someone, get my heart broken, and then, in my grief and disillusionment, restrain myself from giving any guy within a five-mile radius merry hell. Despite my idealism and honorable intentions, I once again found myself thinking very bitterly about love to mask my deeper devastation.

“I think,” I said, near tears, “that I’m going to be single for a long time because I can’t handle this scene. My heart is broken too easily, and I don’t think I can settle for a good-for-now relationship just for comfort or recreation. I care too much. What can I do in the meantime, while I wait?”
He didn’t answer this question, but said, instead, as though he had heard a different question entirely, “Laura, it sounds like you’ve been disappointed by these boys – to some extent because their behavior is, quite frankly, disappointing – but I also think that you’re at the age where you’re going to be disappointed: you expect a lot from others and yourself. And single, dating – the question is what you’re going to do in the face of disappointment: are you going to live a full life of faith that someone can someday come alongside, or are you going to end up with someone as cynical and jaded as you are becoming?”

I felt the salutary sting of challenge. He was right. I hadn’t addressed the root of the problem: what to do in the face of disappointment. I hadn’t interrogated my expectations to find out what they said about my beliefs about myself and other people. When I did, I began to understand that my expectations, which I thought were so high, were not high enough. I saw love as something transactional and contractual, a matter of compatibility, circumstances, and a kind of righteousness: a right order of relationships. I should be with you because of x, y, z; I should not be with you because of x, y, z. These variables were undefined and mutable, and that was the problem. I didn’t know what I really wanted – all I knew was that whatever it was, I wasn’t getting it.

Alone later, I let my thoughts travel deeply inward to the core of me, gingerly touching and feeling the outlines of the wound, the deep need for another person’s love and understanding. My mind raced around circles, trying to create the most romantic fantasy, the fulfillment of my dearest wish: What do I really want from you? What do I really need from you? I want, I need…

I need you to hold me in your arms and tell me about Jesus. I began to sob. There. That was it. That was it entirely. I felt shaken. What are my true expectations and non-negotiables when it comes to love? Give me Jesus; preach the gospel.

Even on the most awkward first date, even in the messiest break-up, even in our moments of delirious incandescence, we have good news to share. Everything else disappoints, but beyond the hormones and heartbreak the unalterable fact remains – there is good we can do here.