Wells and First Loves

First loves are always tricky. Most of the time when first love springs forth you only know enough of life and love to just be a little dangerous. I’ve been reading a book called Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and one of the things it suggested was going back to consider your first love, to unpack it, and see what lessons it may have taught you or even more importantly what conscious or sub-conscious impact it may have had on you and how you in turn love.

I was not one of the super popular kids in high school. I was liked, was friends with a wide gamut of the population but I didn’t sync with any one group. I was not in to sports at a school level, only dabbling in little league for a bit and playing basketball with my friends. So I didn’t fit in with the athletes. I wasn’t truly a musician even through I played saxophone so I didn’t really fall in with band kids either. I think if you asked most I was probably viewed as decently smart and a church kid, being heavily active in my youth group. I had a set of friends at school but more of my close friendships developed through church.

I did not date a ton, maybe going out with 4 girls over my high school years. But I would say there were two fairly serious relationships and one which I’d have to consider my first love. It started out as many relationships do, we were good friends and that grew into something more. It didn’t take long and I had fallen hard. Looking back I can see that for the first time I had fallen wholly in love, with all the aspects of who I was. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically I was a goner. Lost and in love. My upbringing being so steeped in Christianity and church life, I always struggled to make sense and mesh my relational and spiritual worlds. For whatever reason I struggled mightily to reconcile how I could be crazy about a person and crazy about God at the same time. In this particular case I felt the need to choose for a whole host of reasons and I chose the girl. I still went to church and was active but I was living a separated life…there was no integration nor wholeness and I suffered for it. I basically completely turned away from God for a good portion of time. It’s funny how love works. Everyone else sees things that you are blinded too. Wholly overcome by your passion and feelings for the other person, you ignore warning signs, counteracting feelings, and dive fully and wholly into the love you’ve found. It becomes everything and what you feel you will never be able to live without.

I absolutely stunk at breaking up with people. Not wanting to hurt someone’s feelings and desiring to avoid conflict at all costs, I’d usually become distant and the life would be choked out of the relationship instead of dealing directly and maturely with it. In this particular case I was never going to break up with this girl. And I think she knew it and came to the conclusion that she did not feel as passionately about me as I did her. I had fallen completely but looking back I had probably fallen in love with being in love more than the reality that somehow the two of us were meant to be together forever.

I remember the day she called and broke up with me. I probably knew it was coming but it was still earth shattering. I literally wept. I couldn’t breathe and had no idea what I was going to do. I had rearranged my whole life and ignored a good portion of it and my friends over the course of the relationship. Now everything was in tatters and crashed down around me. I was close to my parents but this was not something I could really share with them. My mom knew because I was a basket case but she and I were not going to be able to have a conversation right at that instant. There was a family who were a part of the adult leaders of our youth group and I called and turned to them. Lesson learned for parents out there, it’s important to have people around you that believe in the same things you do and will speak the same truth into your kids’ lives when tough times come because it takes a village and there are times when the parent/child discussion isn’t enough for various reasons.

The rest of it is a blur….I mean I was probably 16 or 17 at the time and looking back I knew so little of life and of love. But I do remember how it hurt and I remember how despondent I was for a while as I tried to get my life back on track. But as with most things with teenagers, the adventure of life keeps marching ahead and eventually you move forward.

At the recommendation of this book I find myself looking back into my experiences with love and it has me wondering what impact this formative experience may have had. One thing I’ve discussed with my therapist is how emotions are like wells and sometimes when you have a truly painful emotional experience you try to pour concrete over that level and depth of the well so you never have to experience that level of pain ever again. But what he showed me was that when you do this you also pour concrete over the corresponding positive feeling or emotion at that same level. So if you cap your emotional well, eliminating a level of pain or hurt, you also cap the level of joy or happiness you can experience at that same depth. I can look back now and see subconsciously I probably told myself I was not ever going to let that happen again. I wasn’t ever going to fall that madly in love because it was dangerous. It was fire and you could get burned and when you did it was painful. It felt reckless. I poured some concrete over that level of my well and moved on.

Looking back with years now in the rear view mirror, I can see how love was joyful but also something to be treated with care. I would love but I’m sure I’ve always held a little back because we all do. We are all scared of rejection, of hurt, pain, and the gift of our love being spurned. In my one other love relationship that covered the arc of basically 20 years of my life, I loved well but both of us were also so young and I’m sure we had poured over many hurts and pains of childhood, of loves had and loves lost. It’s a rare 18 or 19 year old who has the self reflection and awareness to know how to process their formative years and mesh that into an adult relationship. As with all things in life…there’s always a more abundant level God desires for us. A true, full and whole life that is fully integrated and can access all depths of emotions. I think I generally tend to play it safe so I don’t get hurt. He has shown me that safe doesn’t equal life. He loves us recklessly…to the point that he came here and ended up getting killed for how he chose to love humanity. His love was spurned, he was woefully misunderstood and his closest friends all betrayed him. And yet he still chose to ignore the danger ahead and chose a reckless love.

Speaking of Jesus and wells there are two stories that come to mind and feel appropriate to mention here. The first is a story about a dysfunctional family, a group of brothers, one of which, Joseph, irritated his brothers so much that they ended up pretending he had been killed and selling him into slavery. When they had finally seen enough of his pride and arrogance it says that they threw him into a pit, a hole in the ground mentioning specifically that it contained no water. In other words it was a dry well. He was tossed aside by his own family. Some of you have known a similar sting, being tossed aside and betrayed by those you thought would protect you, would be there for you, maybe by family like Joseph or a friend or lover. Regardless of the who, you looked up from an absolute hole with darkness all around and a glimmer of light seemingly ever so far away. The temptation when you finally drag yourself out of that hole is to look back and say never again. No way and no how. And you pick up the concrete and you start to pour. You cover it and you seal it off. Your heart, your mind, whatever soft and tender part was tossed aside and discarded.

The second story finds Jesus himself sitting at a well in the heat of the day. He asks a woman he finds there for a drink and they begin a long discussion. Long story short, he asks her for water and then lets her know that he alone could give her living water from which she would never be thirsty again. She asks for some of this water and Jesus tells her to bring her husband. She says she doesn’t have one and he says you’re right…you’ve had five and the guy you are now with isn’t your husband. And she finds life. At some point I believe she too poured some concrete over her heart, to the point that her relationships failed over and over again…because she had probably sealed off her heart. Her well was surface level and I don’t believe she could get to the depth required to have a real relationship anymore because of the hurt and pain she had experienced in her past. So she settled. Settled for multiple wells that always drew the tiniest amount of water but never enough to sustain. And eventually instead of sustaining water it would just pull up a bucket of dust.

I don’t know what the future holds for me. But I’ve learned a good bit about myself over the past 2 years. Things that are going to serve me well in the next chapters of my journey. There’s a guy out there that still meets us at the wells of our hearts. He looks down there and he sees all the concrete we’ve poured. He sees the trash and refuse from our failed relationships down in our wells. And he doesn’t judge. He just looks and he says don’t you want something more. Let’s break this stuff up. There’s water down there you know, more than you ever knew or thought could be there. Water for you. Water that will sustain even others. We can all work daily with him to break up the areas where we’ve concreted over parts of our hearts. Where we have chosen safety, consistency, and assurance over adventure, love, and vulnerability. In the end we have fallen for a trick, thinking our lives and our loves were made to be domesticated, tamed, and safe. It’s not true. We were made to be wild and if you are up for the challenge, up for the highs and the lows, for the love and the pain, for the joys and the heartbreak, you can experience love at a depth beyond what you have always imagined. We don’t have to settle, but there is also no promise that it will always be joyful and blissful and never dark and painful. Ask Jesus to turn up the ground of your heart and break the areas where you’ve poured the concrete to keep yourself safe and secure. Ask him to help clean out the refuse of past broken relationships and loves that didn’t last. It will be painful and scary at first. And I recommend learning of his love before running out and trying to capture another’s heart or giving them yours. But he’s reckless and has so much to teach us about what it means to love and what an abundant life looks and feels like. I used to think abundant life was one devoid of pain and heartache. Now I now it’s one that knows the way through the peaks and the valleys, feeling them all fully and truly, healing and then letting go, ready to embark on the dangerous but beautiful adventure ahead.