Tag Archives: family

Cultivating Emotional Intimacy

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When someone you know is going through a hard time, it’s natural to ask that person whether he or she has adequate support. As our regular readers know, the last several months have thrown many challenges our way. We are continuing to stand firm because we’re able to support one another. Many people have asked us what our intimacy looks like, and today we’d like to address a question we’ve received: “How do you cultivate emotional intimacy in a celibate relationship?” In most ways, our response is no different from what we would expect to hear from a healthy, non-celibate couple.

Upon coming into relationship with one another, we fell almost immediately into a natural pattern of cultivating deep emotional intimacy, and we’ve seen that continuing as our relationship has grown. There’s something about our personalities that has allowed each of us to “get” the other, even though we’ve both experienced being profoundly misunderstood by many people in our lives. Sometimes, two people can just click.

Our friendship blossomed because we were willing to be vulnerable with each other. As we’ve shared before, we believe that vulnerability opens the door to intimacy. When we were just beginning getting to know each other, we shared random facts about ourselves and our lives. Lindsey learned that Sarah used to wear mismatched socks to express Sarah’s individuality in elementary school. Sarah learned that as a kid, Lindsey worked to save money so Lindsey could attend Space Camp three times. These micro-stories gave us opportunities to share an incredible number of life experiences and the various emotions associated with these experiences. We each saw bits and pieces of the other’s personality, and came to appreciate some similarities while acknowledging some real differences in our pasts. Our selections were truly random, spanning from the deeply significant to the absolutely trivial. In addition to helping us get to know one another as people, sharing these stories laid a foundation for our coming to trust one another.

Early on in our friendship, we made a commitment to being completely honest with one another. Honesty is one of the highest values for both of us, and we’ve both experienced past relationships in which we or our significant others have had difficulty with being forthright. Because of this, we’ve challenged each other to be radically open about our thoughts, feelings, and mistakes when there’s a problem. Within the first month of our friendship, we had already started to see this pattern emerging between us. Though at first Lindsey considered the topic embarrassing, Lindsey shared openly with Sarah about Lindsey’s writing anxiety and the kind of support needed in order to manage it. Since we’re both writing doctoral dissertations, that type of information has been vital to ensure that we’re accomplishing our goals without sacrificing our emotional needs. Since the time Lindsey first opened up to Sarah about writing anxiety, Sarah has been able to check in with Lindsey about it and provide comfort and encouragement when Lindsey needs it most. Equally humiliating was the first time Sarah told Lindsey about Sarah’s eating disorder history. Because many people assume that these conditions are merely attention-seeking devices for wealthy, white, teenage girls and not legitimate medical conditions that could affect someone Sarah’s age, it has been a struggle for Sarah to be authentic about the need for support. But when Sarah did open up to Lindsey about this for the first time, Lindsey was unimaginably supportive and impressed by Sarah’s commitment to living a recovery-focused lifestyle even during the hard times. Examples like these have built upon our foundation for trust in one another.

Over the first few months that we knew each other, we learned a great deal of information, including the most painful and hidden parts of one another’s lives. A crucial piece of our emotional intimacy has been accepting each other’s emotional pasts for what they are and being able to appreciate that, by virtue of our humanity, we both carry deeply-rooted wounds. Whether it’s related to an issue that occurred during one of our childhoods, ways we’ve experienced hurt within the Church, Sarah’s trauma and the resulting PTSD, negative messages Lindsey received in ex-gay ministry, or something else entirely, we know that there will be space for conversation and respect for that experience’s symbolic meaning when we’re ready to talk about it together. Cultivating empathy for each other’s brokenness–that which we share in common and that which varies individually–has helped both of us to feel safe in being completely genuine with one another, regardless of how ugly that might look sometimes.

While emotional lives are built over the entire lifespan, all people experience their emotions moment by moment. We tend to regard in-the-moment emotional experiences as slightly unpredictable because emotions can vary, especially when people are under a good deal of stress. We have made a practice of affirming one another’s right to feel in the moment, even if the other doesn’t understand exactly why that particular mix of emotion is present at a given time. Our commitment to opting in 100% as we do life together has helped us develop a strong emotional intuition. When Lindsey experiences a panic attack, Sarah can usually tell whether Lindsey would benefit most from reassurance and empathy, some clear direction to start problem-solving processes, or a mixture of approaches. This emotional intelligence goes both ways in our relationship. One day recently, Lindsey just held Sarah as Sarah started crying hysterically after a conflict with Sarah’s nutritionist. Given that Sarah had been in a car accident the day before and Sarah rarely gets upset to the point of tears, Lindsey knew something was up. Nevertheless, Lindsey sat in that space with Sarah until Sarah was ready to share the specifics of what had happened. We’re profoundly grateful God has opened up to us a space of grace to be able to discern what emotional response would best draw us into a deeper relationship with one another, even though we’re still learning.

While some aspects of emotional intimacy have come naturally, other aspects of emotional intimacy are more difficult. We’ve struggled with and will continue to determine the best pathway through the difficulties associated with being open about our spiritual lives and places where our spiritualities differ. On some levels, our spiritualities are incredibly compatible: we both value intellectual honesty, placing life in the Church in its historic contexts, cultivating a prayer life, and being shaped within our specific Christian tradition. On other levels, we’re continually surprised at just how hard it’s been to honor our natural spiritual inclinations when developing our own sense of tradition. Lindsey’s faith journey has been profoundly influenced by mainstays of the Evangelical tradition, as Lindsey’s faith began to blossom in college while Lindsey was participating in Intervarsity and playing on the worship team of a nondenominational congregation. Sarah’s personal spirituality and formation has been tied to more liturgical traditions, as Sarah has naturally grown in faith through partaking of the sacraments and engaging in robust intellectual reflection. Even though our spiritualities may look very similar at first glance, we’ve learned that we value incredibly different facets of the spiritual experiences we share. We have welcomed the opportunity to learn more about each other even though we’re still learning the best way to have these conversations. That said, we should also note that we have high expectations and hopes that we will find our way.

The emotional intimacy that we’ve been able to cultivate within our partnership has also manifested in spillovers into other relationships. We find it easier to be compassionate when others are going through hard times. We can affirm other people’s emotions and create space for whatever feeling happens to be in the room. We’ve learned that matching appropriate responses with how a specific individual experiences emotion can be hard, so we try to respond first with empathy. Cultivating emotional intimacy in all one’s relationships is a lifelong process, and we’re glad to take in whatever wisdom the journey may bring.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Saturday Symposium: Easter Traditions

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A very blessed Saturday to all of our readers. We rejoice that all Christians share a common date for Easter this year, and we pray you experience the joy of the Resurrection this weekend.

This year, we felt like the joy of Easter entered a bit early. Lindsey has formally accepted a job offer. While we still have a bit of time before the start date, we’re prayerful and hopeful that God will provide for us in the early summer.

And now for today’s Saturday Symposium question:

How this works: It’s very simple. We ask a multi-part question related to a topic we’ve blogged about during the past week or are considering blogging about in the near future, and you, our readers, share your responses in the comments section. Feel free to be open, reflective, and vulnerable…and to challenge us. But as always, be mindful of the comment policy that ends each of our posts. Usually, we respond fairly quickly to each comment, but in order to give you time to think, come back, add more later if you want, and discuss with other readers, we will wait until after Monday to respond to comments on Saturday Symposium questions.

This week’s Saturday Symposium question: This week, we’d like to ask you how you observe Easter. What are your Easter traditions? How have your Easter traditions changed over time? What has remained constant in your Easter celebration? Do you have any particular things you do before, during, and after the joyous day of Easter?

We look forward to reading your responses. If you’re concerned about having your comment publicly associated with your name, please consider using the Contact Us page to submit your comment. We can post it under a pseudonym (i.e. John says, “your comment”) or summarize your comment in our own words (i.e. One person observed…). Participating in this kind of public dialogue can be risky, and we want to do what we can to protect you even if that means we preserve your anonymity. Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Sarah and Lindsey

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

When Life Is Hard

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We love doing life together. There’s something absolutely wonderful about sharing life with a person you know will always be there. We make a point to opt in 100%, committing ourselves to prayer for one another and seeking the grace to respond in love. Opting in 100% means opting in even when life is hard. Lately, life has been very hard indeed. Between Lindsey’s recent job loss and Sarah’s encountering bumps on the journey to recovery, we have had a lot on our plate.

When life gets hard, we like to remember that being human requires dealing with hard things. Illness, financial hardship, employment uncertainty, accidents, and debt can lurk behind many doors. One never knows when one will face these adversaries. As a couple, we’ve been trying to keep up a strong appearance through some exceptionally difficult times. Our friends who know us best have seen various cracks in the facade. We’ve both seen the other navigating so much stress that it’s hard to know what to say or do. But, we try to focus on responding with grace and compassion as a default. It works well for us; yet, we’d be grateful for a few less opportunities to practice these particular skills under stress.

In some ways, it doesn’t matter which specific adversary we’re facing. The skills learned for being present for each other in one crisis transfer easily when we find ourself facing another challenging situation. We’ve had to learn to listen, to ask questions, and to acknowledge our limitations. So many painfully difficult challenges cannot be wiped out with a silver bullet. Sometimes big problems have no real solutions except to pray for God to act with every gift of the Spirit. Growing together in love means clinging to the instructions in 1 Corinthians 13: “Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.”

When life is hard, we remember that “love” is a verb. To love means to pray, to sit with, to hug, to be present for, and to stretch oneself towards Christ. The bigger the problem, the more we find ourselves reaching out to God asking for a miracle. Sometimes, we have a visible miracle. Other times, we have the intangible miracle of God reminding us that we are not alone. We are so grateful when God sends us friends to encourage us. Over the past several months, we have been overwhelmed by the ways our friends have blessed us.

We certainly don’t always respond well. We’d be the first to tell you that we both get really cranky when we think we’re getting the shaft from the universe. No one likes to file 3 police reports in a month. No one likes to problem-solve complex medical concerns with extremely limited resources. No one likes to have a steady schedule of illnesses, weather-related work closures when you don’t get paid for the snow day, and traffic back-ups that prevent you from getting to where you need to be. It’s hard for us not to blame ourselves for our individual struggles. Yet, our “normal” as a couple frequently involves navigating some seriously hard things, and we have had to discern how God would have us grow towards Christ in all our circumstances.

The hard times are better because we’ve made a commitment to be there for each other. It’s not that “Lindsey is having a hard time” or “Sarah is having a hard time.” It’s that “We’re having a hard time, and we’re doing what we can to steward hope while we wait.” We’ve noticed that it’s easier to have hope when Lindsey has a full calendar of job interviews or when everything seems to be clicking in Sarah’s process. But, it’s the hard times that have shown us more about how Christ loves his Church.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Unlocking the Feast within the Fast

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A reflection by Lindsey

I received a phone call recently from a dear friend. She thought of me because it’s Lent and she doesn’t know anyone who loves Lent more than I do. Every time a friend mentions the Lenten season, I can’t help but smile.

My love of Lent began almost immediately as I started exploring Christianity. I was attending a Lutheran church that had regular Wednesday night soup suppers before a Lenten service series. The theme of the first Lenten series I attended was “Can you drink of this cup?” During the first week we received a small clay cup, and we received items to put into our cup during subsequent weeks. My cup is still on the bookcase in “my” room at my parents’ house. I immediately associated Lent with more communal gatherings and a focused effort to grow closer to Christ.

In college, I attended an Evangelical Protestant church that didn’t make a big deal about the liturgical calendar. Nonetheless, the community believed that God did awesome things when we took time to fast and pray. We started taking a 40 day period before Easter to pray for God to pour His blessings out on us as individuals, on our friends, and on our church. The pastoral team prepared various guides to encourage us to read through a chosen set of Scriptures and to suggest different faith experiments related to prayer and fasting.

Since that time, I’ve become aware of an ancient fasting tradition during the Lenten season that still lives in Eastern rite churches (Orthodox, Eastern Catholic, and some Protestant groups seeking to discover the early Church). The tradition exhorts people to abstain from meat, dairy, eggs, fish with a backbone, wine, and olive oil during penitential seasons and twice a week outside penitential seasons. Like many fasting traditions, it suggests a certain discipline around eating with the expressed intention of helping a person grow spiritually. The ancient wisdom has 2 other teachers: prayer and almsgiving. To be clear: I don’t consider myself to be a good student of any of these teachers. Yet I find that approaching the Lenten season with joy unlocks the feast within the fast.

I’ve found myself gradually shifting towards the Eastern rite fasting disciplines because my local church communities try to keep the Eastern rite guidelines around food. It’s been important to do so gradually because I had to learn to cook first. During the ordinary times of the church year, I rely on easy-to-prepare staple foods that use roughly the same ingredients. Each fast paradoxically presents a new invitation to deepen my appreciation of food. The year I was most observant in the dietary rules was the year I decided to avoid eating out at restaurants during the Lenten period. Having to go to the grocery store regularly caused me to experiment with different combinations of new grains, various vegetables, and beans. Last year, I discovered that avocados have a similar texture to cheese in a lot of dishes. Who knew? Sarah’s higher protein needs have spurred me onward to exploring previously uncharted protein categories of lentils, shrimp, and crab. I haven’t arrived fully yet, but I do enjoy trying. In “fasting” for a season, I actually haven’t lost any foods that I love: I’ve grown in my love for diverse foods, eating a fuller array.

Taking on a certain discipline as a community has a way of bringing people together as a family. You will always have the person who think it’s impossible to eat any foods that follow the guidelines, the person scouring the labels to determine if a particular item has any “forbidden” ingredients, the family quietly inviting lost newcomers to come over for dinner, the person who reminds you that the guidelines emerged during a different place and time, people sick of eating peanut butter and/or lentils, and folks eagerly swapping recipes. Sometimes the same individual falls into multiple categories.

The communal nature of the fasting discipline creates a lot of space for conversations. Looking at my own experiences as a guide, the feast of the Lenten fast can be found in community. No matter what Christian tradition I’ve been a part of, people have made time to come together, pray, and eat during Lent. I find it amusing that churches have more meals together during “fasting” periods than they do in “ordinary” time. Care to pass the guacamole?

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Growing Together in Virtue

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Several readers have asked us questions about how we find benefit from being together in a partnership rather than living as celibate singles. We’re not ones to sound our own trumpets, and we know that we’re very much works in progress. Over the time we’ve been together, we’ve learned a lot about ourselves as individuals, each other, and us as a couple. We think being able to make a commitment to be there 100% whatever life throws our way does help us grow together and individually. By attempting to cultivate virtues in our vocation together, we’re able to be more present, open, and respectful. We hope that in time we continue to grow towards holiness. Today, because we’ve been asked specifically about growing together in virtue, we want to present some ways we’ve seen virtues manifesting in our lives together thus far in our partnership.

We give each other space to process difficult questions and life issues, but we’re also learning how to support each other effectively during these times. As we grow in our capacity to love one another and God, we experience moments of compassion that were not as present earlier in our relationship. We notice each other being able to extend empathy in new ways when one of us is faced with a challenging situation. When Lindsey suddenly lost a job in December 2013, we began managing a great deal of additional stress and uncertainty. Job loss is hard for any number of reasons: there’s a blow to a person’s confidence, financial stresses go without saying, a job seeker needs to put significant energy into the search even before getting the first email reply back, a family has new questions about what kinds of job searches are honestly in bounds, people ask for lots of support from extended family and friends, etc. It would be all too easy for Lindsey’s frustration to bubble up into anger and for Sarah’s full schedule to produce exasperation. However, being together has helped us stay the course. Sarah can help Lindsey decide when it’s best to put more letters out there and when it’s best to wait and see if a solid lead is going to produce a favorable outcome. Lindsey can help Sarah manage affairs of the house even amid completing job applications. We can remind one another that God is at work even when we seem lost. Sarah gives Lindsey a listening ear to process what is happening. Lindsey can always remember to greet Sarah with a hug. Together, we can offer one another a kind of emotional stability that makes trusting God easier. Sarah can read Lindsey and discern when advice would be welcome or when it’s best to practice compassion.

We have made a commitment to cultivate charitable speech toward one another, even when it doesn’t come naturally. That includes when one of us is having a bad day, when we’re arguing, and when we’re feeling impatient with each other. In all our friendships and other relationships, there are times when it seems easier and even more cathartic to express thoughts and feelings forcefully and indignantly. We think most people probably experience moments when it feels better to sound off like a bullhorn than to communicate difficult emotions with kindness, and we know this is true at times in our interactions with each other. Sarah often becomes irritated at Lindsey’s tendency to leave empty soda cans and bottles lying around the apartment, and it doesn’t help that Sarah considers Lindsey’s soda habit annoying in and of itself. Therefore, it takes little effort for Sarah to announce snarkily, “I’d like to see one evening when I can come home and not have to pick up a soda bottle in the living room!” In the same way, Lindsey finds it frustrating how frequently Sarah forgets that it’s her job to clean the cats’ litter box. It can be tempting for Lindsey to remark, “You can’t ever seem to be responsible with this.” It’s much more of a struggle for both of us to challenge ourselves toward kind, loving communication that addresses problems while also extending grace and empathy, but we make a daily commitment to doing so anyway. We don’t always get it right, but the more we practice saying, “I know you’ve had a busy day, but could you please take a few minutes to clean the litter box/tidy the living room?” the more natural it becomes for us to use charitable language in our relationship and also in our interactions with other human beings.

We encourage one another to say “yes” and “no” in healthy ways. Like many other people, we both oscillate between thinking that we can conquer the world and wanting never to get out of bed ever again. Learning how to say “yes” and “no” in healthy ways involves cultivating humility. When Lindsey lost a job, it was easy for Sarah to spring into action and look for extra work everywhere possible. Lindsey nudged Sarah to consider that the only real solution was both of us earning an income. We consistently urge each other to attend to our mental health, acknowledging whatever limits we may encounter. Like many couples, we have times where one of us is very excited about doing something when the other has serious misgivings. We have learned to balance when it’s time to compromise and when it’s time to advocate for our own needs. Frequently, extroverted Sarah wants to stay out far longer than introverted Lindsey can handle. We’ve learned to communicate about our different needs. Sometimes Sarah will take a moment to people-watch, sitting on a quiet bench to give Lindsey a few minutes to recharge. Other times, Lindsey will see that Sarah has a significant energy need that can only be met by getting around a lot of people. We have learned a lot about each other’s complexities that affect our preferences for social activities and activities together. Just as Lindsey needs to sit on a quiet bench to re-energize, Sarah also needs to sit calmly for a bit with her inhaler before venturing outside in cold weather to ward off any asthma attacks. In both circumstances, we need to be able to say and hear “yes” and “no,” and talk about disagreements that may arise. Learning to say “yes” and “no” in healthy ways has shown us quite a bit about cultivating patience.

We are learning to offer correction to each other lovingly. Caring about another person means helping him or her grow. Open and honest communication means acknowledging when you’ve said something hurtful. We’re quick to apologize when we have offended one another and try to observe a general rule of not going to bed when we are still in conflict. We choose to continue communicating in love even when we’re exhausted, frustrated, and overwhelmed. When Sarah gets overwhelmed, Sarah can be very terse and critical. Lindsey has learned how to highlight these communication patterns in a respectful way that enables Sarah to make appropriate changes. Since Lindsey is an engineer, Sarah knows to watch out for when Lindsey slips into “engineer mode,” trying to fix all the problems. Sarah is able to nudge Lindsey from a space of “fix-it” to a space of listening. We’ve learned when it’s best to encourage the other to sit down, stay still, and talk more openly about what is going on with us. Regularly practicing empathy for one another helps us grow in charity, a growth that affects the wide array of our relationships with others.

We encourage each other to enjoy life. Faith, hope, and charity are three often-named theological virtues. We’re both predisposed to taking life rather seriously. We have a lot of responsibilities on our plate. Lindsey knows Sarah is an extrovert and benefits from having fun around a lot of different people. Therefore, Lindsey is constantly on the lookout for different social activities to share with Sarah. Similarly, Sarah knows that Lindsey finds a great deal of enjoyment during special times at home. Lindsey enjoys the occasional excursion to one of our favorite nearby markets where we can find an interesting culinary experiment in the making. We’ve learned that enjoying life together produces hope, even when things look very dark.

In closing, we are not trying to present ourselves as models of sanctity and faithful living. We wanted to share some of the positive fruits we’ve seen in our relationship thus far, noting how these fruits help us live more fully into our first calling of putting on Christ and imaging Him to the rest of the world through our lives. We pray that God continues to help us grow closer to Him through the relationship we have with each other.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.