WordArt

21 things

Alanis Morissette came up with this list in her album, Under Rug Swept. I actually really like it. I’ve never really been very good at coming up with lists about things like what I want in a lover. It was always just cheesy stuff like, ‘cute, good sense of humor, Christian…’ and of course the word lover was never allowed to title my list. But upon listening to this song, and really getting to like it, I think that her list really resonates with me. I compiled it into a number list to make it a little more my organizational style and cut out the repetitious chorus stuff, for any of you who know the song and are tempted to call me out on poor quoting.

So, I choose this too, as well as some of her other sentiments about wanting things in a lover. Enjoy…

21 Things I Want in a Lover—Alanis Morissette

1. Do you derive joy when someone else succeeds?
2. Do you not play dirty when engaged in competition?
3. Do you have a big intellectual capacity, but know that it alone does not equate to wisdom?
4. Do you see everything as an illusion?
5. But enjoy it even though you are not of it?
6. Are you both masculine and feminine?
7. Politically aware?
8. And don't believe in capital punishment?
9. Do you derive joy from diving in and seeing that loving someone can actually feel like freedom?
10. Are you funny?
11. à la self-deprecating?
12. Like adventure?
13. And have many formed opinions?
14. Are you uninhibited in bed?
15. More than three times a week?
16. Up for being experimental?
17. Are you athletic?
18. Are you thriving in a job that helps your brother?
19. Are you not addicted?
20. Are you curious?
21. And communicative?

these are 21 things that I want in a lover
not necessarily needs but qualities that I prefer
I figure I can describe it since I have a choice in the matter
these are 21 things I choose to choose in a lover

I'm in no hurry I could wait forever
I'm in no rush cuz I like being solo
there are no worries and certainly no pressure
in the meantime I'll live like there's no tomorrow

Flushing. I feel myself sliding down this spiraling, swirling, sickening chute, down into dark places that make me uncomfortable, that I am scared to go. I fall through the plumbing of the fall out of my choices, of my character, of my life, and land in a pool of sewage, speechless and in tears. This is no place for God. This is no place for something as beautiful as Love, as strongly cleansing as Love, as rich and healing as Love. But He insists on meeting me here. I want to get up, I want to clean up, I want to climb out, take a breather, rinse off. I’ll come back later, I’ll work through this then, when I’m a little stronger, when I’ve learned a little more, when I’m a little more supported.

God will not stop me from running out. God will not insist that I am in no state to be leaving the underground. God will not grab me firmly by the arm and say, if you climb out that pothole you’re out for good. He will ask me to stay, to let Him clean me rightly, but He will not force me. I am uncomfortable and unwilling. So, covered in the filthy waste of my sin, I emerge to restore order to my mucked up world. I am sludging infectious slime around the streets, my odor permeating the home that I return to for some cover up perfume and a breath mint. I drip muck in the halls at school, my stench follows me to work, and as I pull myself close to people in relationships, or physically intimate substitutes there for, I gain no clarity or strength or purity. I only spread the filth around. It’s on the paper I turned in, it’s on my timecard, punched away, it’s on the body that made mine feel so much better when I closed my eyes and let the edges fade.

And for all that I’m leaving behind, you’d think I was getting somewhere. But this slime is growing, regenerating—It’s coming from me. I filled that whole sewer with the nasty shit inside me. I am fucking disgusting.

Something beautiful calls. Despite my despair, I want so badly to believe that this sirenous symphony is calling me. I follow the gentle whisper to a place deep within me where I hate to go. There in the inner breeding pools of my sinful sludge stands my Lord and Savior with a shovel and soap. “Let’s take it out of you. You can’t take yourself out of it, but I can take it out of you. Be here, be in this, don’t deny it, don’t run, just be here, with Me, in this dark, reeking, hideous place inside of you. Let’s clean out this part of My home piece by piece.”

And so He works in me for hours that feel like years and sometimes years that feel like hours. He scoops up some hurt that’s rotted here and become resentment. He scoops up insecurities that have fermented and grown between us. He picks up wrong decisions that I won’t let go of, and begs me to let him make them right. He scrubs out judgments and pride that have stained my soul like tar stains in an old smoker’s house.

The detox is grueling. I’m not complaining; it’s only necessary. As we purge my insides, there is a deep sense of pain and loss and sorrow and regret. Like scrubbing away dead tissue and infection from a deep wound, there is a pain to taking away what can’t be there for things to become healthy again. As we remove some things, other things shift and become uncomfortable—sickening even. We find things that I had forgotten to hate in myself, and we find hate that He wants to take out of me for good.

I’m not sure how I got here, but I’m weak, empty, exhausted. I would not trade this journey for a thousand good days. Anyone would like to be the God who gets to give you high-fives and tell you He loves you in warm fuzzy ways. But the God worth following is the one that will wait for you in the most unfit places and lead you through them. The God that will shovel your shit and make you be there for it, all the while loving you beyond all understanding.

God is good. Unceasingly. Praise Him.