the9muses the musings of joshua brown

Swamp Water Love

It is beginning to dawn on me that being in a relationship is very much a combining of two flavors. I mean, when a guy and a girl first meet (or even gaze at one another from across a room), there is an undeniable excitement as attraction takes hold and everything the two sees or hears of the other is simply blissful. There is a magical and mysterious gravity towards needing to know more about this wonder-boy or wonder-girl, as the things you have in common just seem to be piling up like university assignments come the end of March. Yet there is a distinctness to the commonalities which are such that the relationship simply feels right...it feels natural...the lovers are enough the same and yet ever-so-curiously different. To put it in layman's terms, the boy and the girl are both soft drinks, yet the boy is Orange Crush (or maybe Sprite) and the girl is Root Beer (or maybe Coca-Cola). Both similar in being soft drinks, yet of a different variety.

Now, I remember as a kid it was the thing to do to mix different soft drinks at the soda fountain when going to the local buffet restaurant or fast food joint. I remember calling such creations "swamp water," but as I understand there are many other names for these mixtures, such as suicide, graveyard, sewage, pop bomb, tornado, kamikaze, garbage soda, hurricane, atomic bomb, splat, or garbage can. I know these names sound quite destructive or in some cases morbid, but the end result would generally be quite tasty. A sugary refreshment that took a bit more effort to come up with than simply choosing one soft drink and sticking with it.

I am beginning to think a relationship, at least one that's more than two weeks long, is somewhat like this. It definitely takes more effort to be with someone else than alone, yet when the two flavors of who you are come together, it creates something special. Instead of being two separate soft drinks with two separate flavors (but both with a carbonated, sugary base!), over time two people begin to form a shared identity. There is a change that takes place amongst both people, and the gaps between the flavors begin to meld into a new flavor entirely. Whether there is too much Root Beer or too little Orange Crush is something that may be tweaked over time, but I do know that in the end the swamp water should taste like a little bit of both yet with a new shared character that is more satisfying than either one could be on their own. If not, well, then maybe there was some V8 involved after all and it just wasn't meant to be!

There may not always be the distinctness which led to the excitement of when the two flavors first met, but the tingling urge to move into relationship would have been only natural, just as a kid standing in front of a soda fountain would only naturally wish to mix soft drinks, and the experience of being together creates a much tastier and satisfying drink than would have otherwise been possible.

Loving Imperfection

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
— Ephesians 2:4-5

Our own shortcomings are oh so blatantly obvious. We know when we have a bad hair day, when we are just a little too fat or too skinny, when we didn't do as well on a test as we thought we would, when we know we are hiding sin from God and others, and yet when we look at her she seems perfect. When we look at her we feel the lesser. When we look at her it is like earth has a resident angel.

There's that typical cliché of the girl who drops her textbooks on the way to class only to have the infatuated boy come along and assist her at just the right moment in picking them up. Maybe it's been seen a thousand times at the movies or on TV, or maybe it's even been experienced; but there is a profoundness to the simplicity—a small crack in the absurdity that is spilling of truth. That truth is that girls are imperfect. No matter how beautiful, how smart, how romantic, how spiritual, how, dare I say it, sexy a girl is, there is imperfection. The girl that's been admired from afar all those weeks, months, or years, from the very first moment of most intimate meeting, is flawed. From the very moment of picking up her textbooks with the sacrificial bend of the knees and arch of the back she has displayed for you her imperfection. The fact that the perfect angel on earth even had the capability to err—to drops her textbooks, not the slightest of embarrassments—was most likely unthinkable. In the moment, the idea of imperfection harbored beneath such pure skin is probably even moreso overlooked amidst sweaty palms and a butterfly infested stomach.

Your first introduction in the hallway, in a fluster of giddy bashfulness, was an introduction to the imperfection of what your eyes saw as perfect—and you probably didn't even know it. Now, with the case in point, how will you react to this discovery? In ignorance and lustful desire, believing foolishly that there is another out there with greater beauty and less flaw? Or in companionship, so as to be by her side sharing the load of the books so as to lessen the chance of an accident?

It might seem prudent to never cross paths again and overlook the flaws, being able to go back to the seclusion of simply watching her from afar, believing naively that there is such a thing as a perfect. However, to truly be aware of and accepting of the imperfections of the other without judgement but rather tender love leads to the most blessed of intimacy. Besides, it was God who invented love for the flawed. And that love is sometimes a risk, and even more so can require sacrifices for the good of the union.

Didn't Jesus model that sacrifice in the face of our mocking jeers, all in the name of love? But there was an end goal, a grand providence laid out for us, and the same principle applies to our own sacrifices for one another: imperfect lovers working towards the hope of one day being able to love each other perfectly...what a beautiful proposition.

Our Lady Peace - "Paper Moon"