me and rachael and the art of doing something

Last week I went to visit Rachael Leeson (who is, somewhat remarkably, my girlfriend) at uni in Exeter. I had a really, really, really nice time. This blog should probably have an ‘extreme soppiness’ warning label on it, so feel free to look away now, but hopefully it won’t be too nauseating. So here’s a little chain of thoughts about why it’s so fun being with Rachael – last week and these days in general…

thing one: we had good times with just the two of us.
This one is pretty obvious, but still, it’s true so I thought I’d include it. We went to the beach on Tuesday, even though it was forecast to rain, and it was tres amusant, as they say en Francais. We missed the train and so we had our picnic in the station, and we walked along the beach, and collected pretty shells, and went to look at the big lifeboat, and we had banoffee ice cream (inside, because it was too cold) and we went up to the top of a cliff and played hopscotch, and saw a bee fly into it’s burrow (who knew that bees had burrows?) and had an entertaining encounter with a dog trying to fetch a stick that was too fat for its face, and talked about all sorts of things, and missed the train on the way back as well and ate some butter crinkle biscuits. Good times.

but this was combined with thing two: we spent good time with other people too.
This one is still quite obvious, but less so. One of my favourite things about going to Exeter is getting to spend time with Rachael and her friends. They are legends and I love them, but the best thing is that they are Rachael’s friends, and now they’re my friends too. That we get to share love for them. It’s also fun because it means Rachael doesn’t have to have two lives (and same for me when she comes to Cambridge) – one which is with me, and one which is with them – and then she just switches awkwardly between them. Instead, she has one life, and I am a part of it. And when we skype I know who she’s talking about and I actually care as well, which is always good.

and thing two happens because of thing three: we are doing something together.
What I mean by this is something that has changed in our relationship since we started going out: we used to just want to be with each other, but now we’ve started to do something together. I think that a lot of the time we kind of assume that the only way to get to know someone better is to sit there and take turns to talk about yourselves, or maybe just to gaze deeply into one another’s eyes; but we’ve realised in the last couple of years that there’s only so much you can get to know someone like that. Mixed in with that, what really does the job, is doing things together. Maybe climbing a mountain (haven’t tried this with Rachael yet, but there are plans…), or maybe baking a chicken and mushroom pie (New Years Eve twenty-twelve all the way), or making loads of toasties and then giving them to people and talking about Jesus (last time she came to visit) – whatever it is, doing things together is an awesome may to be closer to each other without just spending all our time tying ourselves in emotional knots for the fun of it. And it’s a deeper sort of knowing too, a real kind of friendship, a trust, a companionship, because we’re companions on a journey together. I apologise for the pretentiousness of that last sentence, but my point stands. But there’s also a bigger thing going on here. What we’re fundamentally doing in our relationship has changed, because what we’re doing with both of our lives has changed. The way it is now, the way we want it to stay is this, and it’s pretty simple: Both of us are spending our lives loving Jesus, and loving people because he loves them, and hoping we can show them that, so that they can love him back. Sometimes we do that separately, and then when we’re together, we do it together. And in all sorts of wonderful ways Rachael helps me to do that better, and loving her is one of my favourite parts of that whole plan, and I hope that the same is true the other way round: but the liberating, glorious thing about it is that it means our relationship is not about us. The epic paradox of the whole thing being that the less it is about us, the more beautiful it is for us.

and as you can see, thing three flows out of thing four: we prefer Jesus.
This, to be honest, is the real cornerstone of why I love being with Rachael so much, it’s the river that flows through the heart of everything and keeps stuff alive – simply that we love Jesus more than we love each other. I remember this incredibly beautiful evening that we spent together back when I was in Torquay on my gap yaaah, and we were talking about some stuff I’d just read by Henri Nouwen. He’s this great Christian writer, and he was speaking about relationships and he said two things that changed a lot. Firstly he said that often we make relationships like hands clasped together with the fingers interlocked. 

We intertwine ourselves as tightly as we can with the other person, so there’s loads of contact, but if either of us moves, there’s lots of friction, and it’s really painful to pull ourselves apart, even for a short time, because we’re so tightly wrapped up in each other. Nouwen suggested that we try having a relationship like a pair of praying hands.

They are touching, there is contact everywhere, they are together. But instead of being completely entangled with each other they are pressed together, pointing in the same direction. They are free to move, and while they can feel each other moving they don’t lock each other in place. There is less friction, instead its a willing, peaceful, togetherness. He puts it better than I can: “This relationship is no longer a fearful clinging to each other but a free dance”. And the other thing he said was this: “mutual love is experienced as a participation in a greater and earlier love to which it points”. I remember sitting with Rachael and the two of us realising that our love for each other was a metaphor (I do love my metaphors) – that it was a part, it was a picture, of a “greater and earlier love”, that God gives it to us as a way to show us how deep and beautiful his love for us is, and how much he longs for us to share it with him. And I remember the two of us praying about that and just this incredible joy that came with it. Realising that God loves Rachael so much more and so much better than I do, but he lets me join in. That he loves me, so much more and so much better than Rachael does, but he uses her to give me a taste of it. And that together, he makes us a glimpse of his love to other people. 

And that’s why I love it when Rachael comes to stay, and she sleeps on my mate Joanna’s floor, and I get a call at 10am and she says they only just got up because they were up until three chatting about Chicken Run and the rest of their lives and Jesus. I love it because that’s part of the thing we’re doing together – loving Jesus and loving people because he loves them. I love it because I love sharing the brilliance of Rachael with other people – just like Jesus and the Father, they love each other so intensely, and they are utterly faithful to one another, but they open out that love and include us in it. I could go on about all this stuff for a very long time, but basically all I’m trying to do is publicly thank Jesus for Rachael, and what he’s done to the two of us. Because since we started loving Jesus more than each other, we love each other so much more and so much better. Because the more I love him the more I love her, and the more she loves him the more it is an honour and a delight to be near her. I promise I am not exaggerating. It is not perfect, and it is not always easy (especially living five hours apart most of the time), but it is always good. Probably because it’s not about us, it’s about Him – and he’s not always easy, but he is always good.