The other night I jumped into a cab after dinner with a friend and headed home, uneasiness settling around my heart.  We had just had a minor disagreement, but to a heart like mine that prefers even the illusion of peace to the reality of discord, every disagreement is major.  And though I can never rest in tension, can’t even find sleep with the slightest anxiety present, I often pitch a tent there anyway grounded by stakes of stubbornness and pride.  And the rarely wavering belief that I am right.

This time was no different, and though we worked it out later, the ride home was an encampment in that tension.  And as I watched the city scroll by outside my window, a familiar feeling hit me.  A feeling from the early days of my life in New York, when solo cab rides were a frequent occurrence.  When solo everything was a fact of life.  Before I had met and settled into a group of friends, and way before I had met the best of those friends and settled down with him.  Back then, the city and Jesus were my constant companions, but I could only see one of the two.  And so I found comfort in the sight of tall buildings and familiar streets.  In routes covered over and over: the walk from Union Square to Magnolia Bakery; the blocks between my apartment and the Central Park Reservoir; the lights in the windows along Fifth Avenue at night.  New York City is a fantastic place to be alone.

But for someone as prone to introversion and self-protective walls as I am, this can be a liability.  The solace I found in simply walking miles around the city, going to the ballet, hitting the museums, all by myself, was becoming more rule than exception.  To the point that I preferred these activities to outings with other people. I was isolating myself, using New York as my fortress.  Until, one afternoon, I passed my elderly upstairs neighbor on the way into our building.  She was carrying on an animated conversation, raising her voice and gesturing with her hands.  And she was talking to herself.  This is what happens when you stay in New York too long, I thought to myself.  Or when the city becomes your best friend.  That night, after going back and forth about it in my head for hours, I stepped out of my cozy life for one and into a (for me) completely uncomfortable scenario.  I walked down the street and showed up at one of Redeemer’s small groups.  The small group that introduced me to that group of friends and, a year later, that best friend.

Before the BF and I got together, I had gotten to a place where I admitted I may always be single.  And, as much as a girl raised on fairy tales and romantic comedies can be, I was okay with that.  To the point that it kinda became a source of pride for me: look how special God thinks I am that he can’t share me with anyone else!  I will bear this cross and do great things in this world, all on my own!  I WILL SUFFER IN SINGLENESS!

Except…we all know how that turned out.

I had embraced what I thought was the hardest thing for my heart to handle, even felt I had mastered it.  But mastery is not a tenet of the Christian faith, not this side of heaven.  My heart had new challenges to face.  Challenges that occur when one imperfect soul meets another, challenges with words like compromise and forgiveness and patience and understanding. Ugh.  These are actually the hardest things for my heart to handle, this day-in, day-out accommodation to a force bigger than my will and more important than my plans.  Showing grace, reliably, to someone who is always there.  Someone who, it turns out, has a heart vastly different from mine.  A heart that leads him to admit when he is (rarely if ever) wrong and apologize sincerely and immediately.  In a way that makes me have to pull up my stakes of bitterness, pack up my tent, and show some of that grace just as immediately.  When I’m so much better at showing punishment.  And being right. And making war.

But love is what I am called to, and it is being taught in the gift of a partner without whom I could not be who God made me to be.  Which is a little offensive to my sense of independence…but then, so is every part of the Gospel.

And there are benefits to this arrangement.  Too many to count, though this blog is one way of keeping track.  Like the other day, when the BF and I were meeting to hit up Bloomingdale’s for some china, and we were caught across the street from each other at a red light.  A cab stopped in the intersection to pick up a fare, and the guy behind him proceeded to honk, then yell, “You f***ing bastard!  F*** you, you f***ing d**k!” and raise his middle finger in salute.  Then the light changed, and the BF headed my way and we laughed together about this crazy city, my former best friend.