Mariah's Daydream & Deana's Shaving

When I was in middle school we had a lot of dances with a lot of dancing.  

By dances I mean there was a group of us that would hold gatherings in our basements and blare Mariah Carey’s “Daydream” cd, or Deana Carter’s “Did I Shave My Legs for This” album.

By dancing I mean we would hug someone of the opposite gender and move slowly in a circle until the song was finished.  I imagine it was a painful 3+ minutes for those boys, while, for the girls, it only fed into our vivid, romantic imaginations as budding teenagers.

We anticipated these nights with much fervor, declaring who we hoped we would dance with and gossiping about who had a crush on who.  We reminisced about these nights often, dreamily thinking about being held in the arms of our crush, dancing to “our” song. 

The funny thing is that at these “dances”, we often had to resort to the name-pulling game.  Often parents would help out in this department.  We’d put all the boy’s names in one hat and all the girl’s names in another hat and pull out one from each hat at a time.  You would then dance with whomever you were fated to be with.  This ensured that we would all dance with someone—even if it meant having to dance with a boy you didn’t like every once in a while (‘cause there were still good odds of ending up getting to lay your head on that one special guy’s shoulder). 

I think this is one of several key moments in life where I began to create this idyllic image of what romance and love ought to look like.  Even the insignificance of dancing with these dreamboats became this image of how things should be…and there became the notion that somewhere in the world there existed a man who would hold me closely, twirl me in a circle to some hopelessly romantic song, and everything would fade in that room except for the two of us—like the movies. It was the way our 6^th and 7^th grade minds functioned.  It was all we knew to want and expect.

There’s been a lot of harm done through the faulty expectations of my teenage (and now into my twenties) self.  I’ve created a world that’s impossible for any normal man to enter into.  Instead, my man must be perfect.  He must do all the right things, say all the right things, and be all the right things.

The only problem? 

He doesn’t exist. 

He never will. 

We create these fantasies and expect others to live up to them…and when they don’t, we are crushed.  We inevitably push guys away because they’ll never live up to our expectations, and so as much as they try to be these incredible men that we want—they always feel like they’ve failed us…because, as much as we don’t want to admit it, they have. 

I hate this.

I hate that I’ve become a person so filled with ideals and expectations that I can’t allow others to be human.  I hate that as a child I was able to easily forget that a mom was drawing my name out of a hat and that was the only reason I was dancing with the “love of my life” and now… all I can seem to focus on is the fact that two names were drawn randomly and from that everything else seems faulty and fabricated.

We become jaded and cynical—but still hoping somehow that perfection exists.

I’ve now gotten to the point where I realize that, as much as this goes against all the things that I’ve wanted to believe my entire life...he’ll never do all the right things, and he’ll never say all the right things, and he’ll never be all the right things.

But, sometimes I think that’s better. 

It’s better because it’s real.

It’s better because it means Jesus is necessary.

It’s better because it allows me to be imperfect, too. 

I'm not saying settle.

But, I'm saying…let go of some of those expectations you have that he’ll never meet.  At some point, you have to allow someone to be human.  At some point, you have to recognize that he can’t read your mind.  At some point, you have to recognize that this whole romance thing isn’t all about you.

He won’t fully complete you.

He won’t fully satisfy you.

That perfect dance with that dreamy guy isn’t really anything like what I pretended it was…and that’s okay. 

It’s time to live in reality…and I’d love for you to join me there.  

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