relationships

"I've looked at love from both sides now,
from give and take, and still somehow,
it's love's illusions that I recall.
I really don't know love...
I really don't know love at all."
-Joni Mitchell

years ago, a dissent with my brother made me certain he wouldn't want to be in my wedding. the long and the short of it was "judgment." the points were rational, the feelings were real, their truth couldn't have been closer. but love was lacking. "If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge," if I can make accurate assumptions of people and see their hearts, "...but have not love, I am nothing" (I Cor. 13:2).
because: "love covers over a multitude of sins" (I Pet. 4:8), not one's own, but those of another. when we say God loves us, it's that our sins are forgotten before him. and when we love one another, it is that sins between us are not dragging down our thoughts; we are not judging other people based on what we see, but loving them based on what we don't.
when my brother was expressing his honest, and agreeable, feelings about my then-girlfriend, just as easily as he was judging her, i was judging him. in that moment, i lost all sight of my respect for him, my understanding of him, my love toward him. and in that broken state, i turned to another.

i asked my then-best friend--considering the heartbreak i was experiencing--if he would be my best man at my inevitable wedding. there was no date, there was no ring; there wasn't even a question. but a part of me had a living hope that it would one day be so. without question, he agreed.
fast-forward. jes and i are engaged, have been for two years, and we finally set a date. my brother's relationship with jes had shown healing; though it was never truly an issue for me, it was a blessing to see it so. for at least a year, he'd had no ill feelings toward her. there was love. so i begin to formally ask those closest to me if they will be in my wedding.
i don't have many friends. my choice for best man, my then-best friend, was at that moment second-choice after my brother. because there had been healing, he had regained, in my mind, the right to stand beside me, beside us, on our wedding day. my then-best friend, i'm sure, would understand "simply" being a groomsman.
but it didn't go as planned, when i asked my brother. in fact, it went about as badly as my heart was able to withstand. and, it had absolutely nothing to do with jes and i. it was simply his issues, his reasoning, his choice. in short, he would if i persisted, but we both knew we didn't share the same heart. so, while i was dealing with the internal turmoil that comes from heartbreak, i turned to another.
the other was none other than, you guessed it, my then-best friend. i asked him, and without hesitation, he agreed.

but something was amiss. it was not meant to be. for, you see, when i asked my brother, there was an issue in his heart, a struggle i couldn't see, but it changed his answer. if he had kept silent about it, i would never had known and he would be standing with me on the altar while an inward wedge separated us. but he made it known, and his input on the subject as a whole, that those who stand with me are figuratively standing with me on values that i share, left me with no regret to ask another in his stead.
but i chose the other poorly. and while i do not regret the choice, i regret the events which had unfolded after the fact. he said yes, but there was at that moment an issue beneath the surface. in my world, he was my best friend. in that second, he was my brother. but for him, nothing needed to be said. and that is one thing considering our friendship, but it is entirely another given both the immense weight of the issue and the [opposing] support for my upcoming marriage covenant.
it involved his family, and to strike the nail right through my heart, it was his relationship, his treatment of, his actions toward his family. to stand for marriage but to forget family: a wedding i would not like to attend, let alone lead. and what hurts most is that i do not say this for anger, but for confusion. for, the person i have come to know as "brother" has forgotten the values that made him so. i do not say this for selfish benefit. yes, i want our friendship restored, but not at the cost of forsaken responsibilities.

our friendship as he knew it ended when i discovered the issue. the rift came not so much when i was made aware of it--for it was not introduced by him--but that i wanted to see it fixed, that i "interfered." when his family came to me and revealed first his treatment toward them, my side was apparently chosen, and whatever friendship he had come to entitle over us was replaced by the same contempt. i didn't know the full issue, but i was experiencing it nonetheless.
to simply forget it might possibly have healed our relationship right there. but an unspoken conflict rots the core of a relationship. the Scriptures do not take it lightly, but they even give us an M.O. by which to resolve conflict. if i have issue with someone, it is my responsibility to deal with that in my heart (Ps. 4:4). but, if someone else has issues with me, it is still my responsibility to see it resolved (Mt 5:23-24).
it was then, in learning that something was truly wrong, that i offered my ear to the half of the story. no questions asked, only answers entrusted. but without the other side, i could never know what the issue was. after much pointless trouble--or rather, the pointed conflict--i managed to hear the other side, his side.
but the meeting began, as it needed to, with a broken promise.
i do not like breaking promises. i do not like making them, for fear of later breaking them. this is folly, in a sense, because i uphold a promise more so than most people i know, and it is something i struggle with often to find the common ground between the two: to what extent should a promise matter, and to what extent should its brokenness be seen as trivial?
i regret having to break my promise; i regret rescinding my proposal to him, i regret stripping his title as, not only best man, but as groomsman--not only best friend, but as friend. i regret these things, wholeheartedly, and it pains me to ever recall them. but the decision needed to be made, and needed to be voiced, to reveal the hurts that were going on beneath the surface.
he took it as punishment: i believed he'd done wrong, and this was my response to it. i can understand that. but it's so much deeper than that, and my heart had become as equally shattered when my words fell to the table.
whatever words he had to say, my mind could not reinstate him to stand upon the altar with us. i still, at that point, considered him a friend, but that was not the prerequisite for such an exalted title. that is like choosing an ox to pull a plow by virtue of it being an ox, when its strength is what you need.

and if these words are not covered in blood and tears enough, his reaction to what i considered love and care for my best friend--or at bare minimum, how i could only hope to have someone confront me in such a way if they saw an issue which i fought against bringing to light--assures me that i made the right decision. and i grieve for it. as though he had died. and that is what makes this so hard, that i literally feel as though i have no contact with him, with his past self, with my friend.

"And now, these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."
-I Corinthians 13:13 (NIV)

i'm getting married in 10 days. and no one has been on my heart more, in these past few months, than my then-best friend.
when i had "suddenly" decided to pursue our wedding day, after two years of engagement and unfulfilled prayers for what i considered a good condition by which we could support each other in marriage, it was at the heart of my choice that a wedding is the happiest of occasions. during our engagement, we had witnessed the worst of people, we had been dragged through it and lives had felt threatened. we had experienced upset and misfortune and troubles and spiritual warfare. my then-best friend and i had even worked through a conflict in that time. my faith had been shaken more than once, my understanding of the church as a community was shredded. there was at least one moment where jes and i felt that we only had each other.
but something so joyous as the union of two souls is meant to shine as a light amidst the darkness that bombards us non-stop. waiting for the problems to go away would mean we would never get married--as surely, what i'm going through now was unforeseen when we settled on a date. there will always be bad, there will always be evil, trying only to pull our attention away from the better. and for two years, it was winning. and even for the past two months, it was putting up a good fight. and after we're wed and continue to live our lives together, it will return. but the moment is what matters, and God designed it so. the past affects us if we let it, and the future isn't written from our perspective, so today is where the pen meets the paper.

10 days. and still it feels as near as it had when i fell in love with her. many friends will be celebrating with us, and that is my idea of what a wedding should be: a celebration. so no matter the struggles that plague our lives, individual or united, we will celebrate. it is the darkness which makes the light so much brighter in comparison, and though i have my regrets, i also have my thanks. we will not be swayed.
one day, He will complete our joy; for, one day, He will unite with His bride. and that day, there will be no more darkness. amen?