IKDG Part I: I Dreamed a Dream (p. 17-18)

Well, here we go! The first bit of my "series", "Alternate Realities: A Personal Response to Joshua Harris's I Kissed Dating Goodbye."

The book begins with the story of a dream, had by Anna, one of Josh Harris's many elusive friends. In the dream, Anna is getting married to this guy David, but, alas and alack, six other girls show up and stand next to David for the wedding ceremony. David informs Anna that they are "girls from [his] past" to each of whom he has "given part of [his] heart" in dating relationships. The dream concludes with David telling the languishing Anna, "Everything that's left is yours."

Now, there is probably no more interesting way to start a book than by telling a dream. Because, who doesn't like to talk about dreams? I have often found that a dream-telling session is practically a no-fail conversation creator when you're running out of things to talk to someone about. One of my favorite dreams to tell is when I dreamed that I accidentally got involved in the plot of this evil spy dude (he stumbled into my apartment by mistake because he thought it was where he was supposed to meet someone). We actually ended up falling in love, even though he was evil. But he had curly hair. So what did you expect me to do?

Anyway. As fun as dreams are, I'm not sure that it's very accurate to take a dream and extrapolate it to apply to real life as JH does in the first chapter of IKDG. Because dreams AREN'T reality. Even the least nightmarish dream has something bizarre and odd about it. I've no doubt that the dream!Anna was very sad about the six dream!girls who showed up with the dream!David, but that honestly has no correlation to the real!Anna or anyone else real.

Because, the dream makes it sound like "giving your heart away" to someone that you don't marry is unfair and cruel to the person that you eventually do marry. Of course, I believe that it's wrong to have sex before marriage, but "giving your heart away" is NOT the same as sex. I've noticed this confusion among many in the pro-courtship crowd. It's like they assume that your feelings and emotions are something you can package up neatly on a shelf and take down and unpack at will. But in real life, emotions are messy and complicated. Sometimes you feel something even though you really, really don't want to. Sometimes you feel something even if you believe it's wrong. Sometimes you feel something and don't even know that you feel it. I'm sure that some people would sleep better at night if they could tell their spouse 100% truly "I've never loved anyone in the world but you," but that is simply an unrealistic, and certainly an unbiblical, expectation.

I remember in the Mahaney's book "Girl Talk," which my mom once went through with me as a study, Carolyn Mahaney would have her daughters come to her periodically during their adolescence and "confess" to her which boys they had a crush on. In addition to being extremely invasive and embarrassing, this system makes no sense to me because the way we feel about people is simply not that simple!

Anyway, the point. JH is wrong to blame "David" for having attatchments to other girls before marrying Anna. People have crushes. People experience attraction. And people get in relationships, realize they're making a mistake, get out of the relationship, and start over again. (In fact, I know someone who was engaged and the engagement ended up getting broken off. And they were a courting couple!) And, if anyone here is nerdy enough, I'm sure we could hear some stories of "giving our hearts away" to a book or movie character. (hee...) And all of this is not equivalant to fornication or adultery. Believing that it is makes people awkward and repressed, afraid to even talk extensively to the opposite sex because that might be too much of an investment if they don't end up marrying that person. But how can you know that someone would be a good marriage partner if you don't invest in them prior to walking down the aisle?

-Violet

"Butterflies"

So these are some song lyrics I wrote for our as-yet-nonexistent band. (Pray do not ask me for the tune, as I am utterly incapable of creating a tune of any kind, lol) And I do have to admit that a little John Keats snuck in there, but it's not scamming, it's a reference, right? ;)

It's vaguely based on a girl that I have never met, but that 2 of my sisters have and whom I have heard about and seen photos of on other peoples' Facebooks (she doesn't have her own account, naturally).

"Butterflies"

VERSE 1
So I’ve just seen the strangest sight
‘Cause I saw you at church last night
Standing shyly there
Across the room
Your grandma’s shoes and wrinkled skirt
Four buttons on your polo shirt:
They wrapped you up
Like a cocoon.
I couldn’t smile on your behalf
But neither could I think to laugh;
I looked at me
When I saw you

CHORUS
How I wish that you and I
Were multi-colored butterflies
We’d float away forever in a jewel-like sky.
‘Cause when I look at you and I
I swear to God, it makes me cry
Let’s spread our wings and soar so high

VERSE 2
Well in a sense you’re not alone
They used to dress me, too, at home
And so I know
What you must be
They snatch your beauty and your smile
And dress you in this dowdy style
In the name of God
And modesty
But in the name of all that is
Who lets you leave the house like this?
Don’t they know how sad
You are to see?

CHORUS
How I wish that you and I
Were multi-colored butterflies
We’d float away forever in a jewel-like sky.
‘Cause when I look at you and I
I swear to God, it makes me cry
Let’s spread our wings and soar so high

VERSE 3
And soon the years will slip unseen
You’re twenty-four and still fourteen
And safe from grown-up
Life and lust,
But you will never find yourself
‘Cause you’re a doll upon their shelf
Is this right?
And is this just?
They’ll stuff your head with silly lies
‘Til real life takes you by surprise
And what will happen,
Then, to us?

CHORUS
How I wish that you and I
Were multi-colored butterflies
We’d float away forever in a jewel-like sky.
‘Cause when I look at you and I
I swear to God, it makes me cry
Let’s spread our wings and soar so high.

-Violet

boys, girls, and sex: the vicious cycle

In the whole world of courtship-minded people (basically homeschoolers who have graduated) boys and girls are not allowed to have any communication outside of a relationship. Now, parents may not say that in so many words cause when they do they sound FREAKING MUSLIM. But nonetheless, it's what they communicate. Then, because they raise their children this way, any touch between a girl and a boy-even bumping of feet say-becomes sexual. Therefore, said boy and girl can't really be left alone because they've been raised such that alone=sex, making courtship necessary. It's a vicious cycle.
I know what I'm talking about, I was raised in the courtship world. Oh-not that my mom would admit that we were-because most "courting families" are legalistic, which we certainly.are.not. (Do you hear the drip drip of sarcasm in my voice?) But nonetheless we essentially are a courting family, much to my chagrin I assure you. I was not raised to view boys as friends. In the attempt to keep my mind from thinking of boys at all, I have instead been taught to only think of boys in a relationshiop sense-and so the cycle goes on. This just simply isn't a healthy way to view guys-always weighing in my mind would I date them or not. Gosh. This is just wrong. My normally raised friends can view guys as just friends to hang out with, not potential soul mates. This oh-so-pure courtship has ultimately ruined my mind.
Courtship was created to keep girls' minds pure and their hearts on God until they are married, or so I'm sure the original intent was. And for the most narrow-minded, unindependently thinking girls I'm sure it works. But I was raised to think on my own, I am my own person. My parents were inconsistent in raising us halfway in one mentality and halfway in the other. The "freedom" of courtship has become my bond.
Vicious cycle much, right?

-Meg

TDOC, Chapter 4: The Inevitable Sex Question

Of course, not all of the above is necessarily bad. For instance, fathers do have a charge to protect their daughters, and it’s really not a good idea to pursue a romantic relationship if you know there is no chance of marriage ever coming out of it. However, I would now like to highlight what I, in my totally inexperienced and hypothetical view, see as some of the very palpable dangers of the courting system. First of all, one of the main reasons cited for choosing the courting system is the belief that chaperoned courting will prevent the couple in question from giving in to their baser urges and having sex before marriage (which I do believe is wrong, so don’t go telling everybody that I advocate it). According to the courting view, ensuring that the couple never spends time together unchaperoned is absolutely essential, because, were the couple to be alone together, even if they are in their 20s and have already been pubescent for several years, they would without fail abandon their personal beliefs, loose all control of their bodily functions, and forget how very inconvenient a possible pre-marital pregnancy is in the courting community, and would promptly break out into spontaneous sex, even on the seats of the movie theater during the louder bits of the movie, and if corner booths in reputable restaurants could talk! However, this view seems to me to belie a central component of Christian doctrine: the idea that God is capable of helping you control yourself when faced with temptation. Courting parents generally expect God to help their children submit to authority, keep their rooms clean, have a patient attitude with younger siblings, and not create online internet viruses that wreak havoc on the national economy, but for some reason, they don’t trust God to help their children not have pre-marital sex. I honestly have to question what it is about this particular sin that requires such special treatment.