Vachon Imagined

When people are attracted to one another, there is a lot more happening than initial physical chemistry. There is an intelligence at work, and that intelligence does not always lead us toward what we think we want. It often leads us toward what will serve our return to God.

Which is a little inconvenient.

If you were designing your perfect partner, you would probably choose someone who agrees with you, understands you, never annoys you, tells you you’re beautiful all the time, including the precise moment when you think you’re at your ugliest, and thinks your way of doing things is obviously the correct way.

And yet, that is rarely who we end up with.

The freedom seeker is attracted to the rigid person.

The rigid person is attracted to the person who thinks rules are merely suggestions.

The social butterfly falls in love with the person who would happily spend three days alone and considers a canceled party a spiritual gift.

Relationship reveals life.

It reveals I.

You may not enjoy long conversations. You may tell yourself, “I can’t listen for that long.” Then you meet someone who talks, and talks, and somehow, you’re attracted to them.

Six months later you’re thinking, Dear God, will this person ever stop talking?

Eventually, you reach your limit. You become impatient. You may even blow up at the person who, interestingly enough, you have grown to love.

That doesn’t make you a non-loving person.

It makes you human.

It reveals a perceived limitation.

And that’s the gig.

No one is going to be completely compatible with us.

Thank God.

Imagine being married to yourself. You would never get an apology, you would never win an argument, and you would still be annoyed.

This is why acceptance and growth matter.

I can accept that I tend to think more rigidly than you without deciding that you need to become rigid.

You can accept that you need more freedom without deciding that I need to become someone else.

And somewhere in that intersection of conflict, true love is found.

The person we love is not necessarily the person who agrees with us, thinks like us, or makes our lives comfortable.

They reveal our impatience.

They expose our need to control.

They challenge our limitations.

They show us where we resist.

And if we are willing to stay, we grow.

Through another person, we learn forgiveness, patience, peace, and harmony.

This is why relationship can become a home.

Not because we found someone who completes us, but because we found someone through whom we can encounter parts of ourselves we could not see alone.

The freedom seeker learns from the rigid person.

The rigid person learns from the freedom seeker.

The talker learns from the listener.

The listener learns from the talker.

Neither has to become the other.

They simply meet.

And in that meeting, life reveals itself.

Love isn’t giving us someone who agrees with us.

It is giving us someone through whom we can become more fully ourselves.

Which is beautiful.

And occasionally extremely irritating.

Love yourself.

Love God.

And that is the lesson.