When I fell in love, it didn’t happen in one fell swoop. It took three years of a deepening friendship and numerous people asking if we were interested in each other for the eyes of my heart to open. And when they did, it was a floodgate that opened. I fell hard, and it took me at least two months before I could admit to myself what was happening. At first, I would berate myself for thinking of my best friend in that way, but eventually I learned to accept it, to embrace it, no matter how weird it seemed. Then at some point senior year of college I was able to admit it to myself, to say, “I like him. And it hurts so bad that no one knows.” So, I told one of my best friends at the time, and she could hardly handle her excitement and not freak out at the same time. I cautiously began opening myself up to a few other trusted friends during that time and told them that I liked my best friend and not soon enough, I told him on a chilly February night on our way back from our regular shopping trip/doing homework at Starbucks routine that we had come to love that year. (Basically, we were going on dates before we were going on dates.)

At that time, he told me that he didn’t like me, but that nothing would change about our friendship. And it didn’t. It was wonderful, and it led him down the path of questioning whether or not he liked me, which he found that he did and that he couldn’t imagine his life without me. We started dating the summer after college, right before I went to seminary in New Jersey. He spent the summer in Colorado and then Bolivia. We saw each other only a few times after we started dating before I moved to NJ.  We delved right into a long distance relationship. I don’t think we could have managed it if we hadn’t had four years of friendship under our belts.

That first year of our relationship, though, was magical. He’d come visit me in Princeton, or I’d visit him in Illinois, and we’d get to hang out, play games, talk about life and bask in being in each other’s presence. Oh, and we’d make out like crazy.  Our mental/emotional relationship was growing steadily over phone conversations, texting, and skyping, but our physical relationship had to grow in spurts when we saw each other, attempting to catch up for the all the time our hearts and minds were growing closer to one another, but our bodies weren’t. It was a dizzying time, falling in love and learning about another person’s body.

Beginning my seminary journey in the midst of my first relationship changed the way I viewed life, theology, God, the Church, the way we’re supposed to be as Christians. Looking back, I can see a continuation from college concerning my theological education. I continued to take an interest in the Old Testament, wrapping myself up in the rich stories like a blanket on a bonfire night in late October. I wanted to learn the stories, learn the meaning of the stories, and figure out how they are stories that transcend time (usually, but not always). In falling in love with the Old Testament and falling in love with another man, I found the two to make sense together. The Old Testament is a lot about body, a lot about feeling our bodies and viscerally responding to God and to our situations through bodily actions. The Old Testament contains less piety than the New Testament; the people in the OT often only deny themselves, their bodies, of sustenance and nourishment when there is a point to be made. They rip their clothes and cry out when richer, bigger nations are marching on their borders. They are full of life, of party, of vitality that I find lacking in the NT (besides Jesus’ parties, of course.)

In falling in love with the OT and my future husband, I found myself using the name ‘God’ more than the name ‘Jesus’ while praying. I found myself speaking less about a personal relationship with Jesus and more about loving God and loving others (and this eventually came to mean other humans and animals and the earth). I found my evangelical tendencies slipping, becoming less pronounced. There used to be a time in high school and a part of college when I had come back to faith where I’d talk about Jesus almost as a lover, “lover of my soul,” etc. Now I look back on it and realize that through my faith and my friendships with girls, I had been looking for a significant other. I had been yearning for someone to share my whole self with; body, mind, and heart. I deeply needed to be known and to know, and in part, I sought this through my faith. I sought this through believing that Jesus lived in my heart and that He knew me unlike anyone else.

Granted, I still believe God knows me in a way that I cannot even know myself (I think? Maybe not.) And my theology has been shaped by a knowledge that God enters into friendship with us, that Jesus chose to be friends with humans, as well as the animals and the earth. So, a part of me experiences friendship with God, but more of me experiences awe, incomprehensibility, and wholly otherness when I think about God. I cannot fathom the Creator of all that is. I cannot understand the righteousness, the pure love God has for all  of us when I so easily dislike people and am disgusted with the way humans often behave (including myself at times). I cannot understand the benevolence of an Artist that paints such stunning sunsets and sunrises for those able to appreciate them. I cannot understand the sheer love of an Entity that would allow freedom of choice when it far too often results in pain for someone or something else. I cannot understand a God who would love me just as much as Donald Trump (because clearly I believe I’m a saint in comparison). God is more unfathomable than the darkest depths of the sea and the greatest galaxies of the universe.

And now that I’m in an intimate relationship with another human, my faith has shifted to fit my understanding of life. It doesn’t mean God is any different, but the ways in which I need God are different, the ways in which I experience God are different. Because of the love that I feel for my husband and the love that we grew over four years of friendship and four years of dating before marriage I can understand better the ways in which God might love that which God has created. The love between two people is complex, filled with easy love and difficult love. It is filled with love that bubbles to the surface when looking into one another’s eyes and it is filled with love that is chosen when there is frustration, annoyance, and hurt. Being in love with and choosing to love another person has so shaped my relationship to God that I cannot help but be both in awe and grateful for the love that God has and the love that God chooses for the whole of creation.