This summer's been kind of a lonely one for me. I'm not seeing most of my seminary friends regularly like I did during the year (though I have made some fabulous new non-school friends), and my partner, this boy who I'm insanely in love with, is still living 200 miles away.
But not for long! We're getting ... somethinged ... this summer, and then he's coming to New York and we're moving into a cozy (tiny) little apartment together. "Somethinged" is a lot like "married," except that I cringe at words like "wedding," and "wife," and "husband," and "married," and "bridal shower," and so on, and so on... There are a lot of reasons for that, and for why we're not asking for legal recognition, many of which I can explain and intellectualize, and many of which are purely visceral. It just feels wrong to me, on every level. I'm not going to get into the other reasons now, though I'm sure they'll come up.
What we are doing is throwing a wicked party for the many people who are important to us, to celebrate this wacky and wonderful relationship we have now and are promising to build together. We have something awesome together, and even though we have no idea what that something will look like in a decade, a year, or even a month, we are joining hands to shelter and nurture this amazing fledgling relationship. It promises to grow into some sort of magnificent bird or other, but we are giving it the freedom to be whatever kind of bird it wants to be. Or maybe it will decide it wants to be a horse, or a pig, or an oak tree. Who are we to try and fit this beautiful, dynamic, growing creature into a pigeon-shaped box?
Part of giving our relationship freedom to grow is not feeling bound, necessarily, by the kind of rules that most people assume are just The Way a Relationship Must Be; but instead respecting the relationship enough to figure out our own rules that feel right. For now, the rules are Love and Respect and Honesty, which seem like good rules to me, in this and any situation.
Early on in our relationship, I was exploring my call to seminary and youth ministry. I think Jesse was a little intimidated by that. He sat me down one night to make sure I knew what I was getting myself into, with him. He said, "When your kids come over, I'm going to be there with my tattoos and my beer and I'm going to teach them about motorcycles." And I said, yes, I know. I hope you'll teach them about motorcycles, that sounds like fun.
One of the sweetest things Jesse's said to me as we've fallen in love is that I've showed him what faith means, just by living it. (I'm still not exactly sure what he means. I'm still learning what faith is, myself. All I know is, I have an incredibly strong belief in the innate beauty and Godness of people and creation, and I live that way.) We've had some great conversations lately about the ways we can team up in our ministries (of love and community and (motor)cycle repair), everything from anti-gentrification community development projects to an open repair shop run on a community time-banking model.
So no, I can't tell you exactly what I mean by "not-wedding," just like I can't tell you what our relationship will look like in a few years, and I can't tell you what exciting Spirit-led mischief-making God has in store for us. But I can tell you it will be exciting, and true, and full of love for ourselves and for our community.
