Scary Close: A Book Review (& some feelings this book unearthed as well)

It was just sitting on the shelf at the library when I was looking for something else.

Donald Miller. Scary Close.

I haven’t read anything by this author in ages.  Last two novels I read of his – Blue Like Jazz and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years – felt like I read them in another life. Which – technically, I did.

Impulsively, I grabbed it and added it to the stack.

Books about the Grand Canyon, the National Parks, Nelson Mandela, the Empire State Building, Twilight (yeah, that’s what one of my kids picked up), drawing guides, a couple Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and this Donald Miller book. 

It made its way to another stack by my bed – Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Know & Tell – and zoomed right past all those as I read it quickly last week.

It’s a non fiction book, a memoir style of story telling, about Miller’s own experiences in relationships, particularly of the romantic nature, during his life and his marriage in his forties after finally growing and learning more about the nature of intimacy between two people.

Although his story certainly revolves around his evolving relationship with his now wife, the topics dip heavily into all relationships, of whatever variety.

I like his style. It’s friendly and engaging, honest and self-deprecating. 

And, like any good book of any genre, I learned about myself through his words.

About some fears in relationships that I am holding on to.  Because of both perceived and real hurts. 

About some reasons why I am perfectly content, even satisfied, to be single and reasons I would value staying that way.

About some unhealthy expectations I have in certain relationships and certainly in future imagined relationships.

He talks frequently about the idea that love, that another human, a spouse, does not complete us.  How erroneous that concept is. How damaging, actually.

And I have felt that myself for a long time. It’s a romantic notion. But a wrong one.

I like his words here:

I don’t know if there’s a healthier way for two people to stay in love than to stop using each other to resolve their unfulfilled longings and, instead, start holding each other closely as they experience them.

In his own life, Miller has the opportunity frequently to put on a show – to be a public persona and a private person. And not that they were necessarily wildly different, but they were not always the same either.  And I get that. I understand that.  I work hard to be the same at home that I am online that I am in business that I am at the grocery store that I am in your house that I am in this blog that I am when you meet me for the first time.

But I understand how it is easy to act one way but to be with your family in a different way. I understand the odd juxtaposition of being vulnerable in this online arena and less vulnerable face to face. And I understand what it feels like to be afraid to be known. Really afraid to be really known, flaws and hang ups and weird fears and all.

Miller says,

It costs personal fear to be authentic but the reward is integrity, and by that I mean a soul fully integrated, no difference between his act and his actual person. Having integrity is about being the same person on the inside that we are on the outside, and if we don’t have integrity, life becomes exhausting.

In his story, he’s in his forties before he gets married for the first time. For a myriad of reasons. One of the reasons, however, is his formerly (however subtle) unhealthy views of relationships and of women and the roles they played for him personally.

He talks a lot about healthy and unhealthy relationships – of any capacity. And how to have a truly healthy relationship, BOTH parties have to be healthy. And although that seems obvious, it apparently is not obvious to most of us.

And, in those unhealthy relationships, how often it seems that they are actually more exciting. More interesting. More of a story and drama. How often a healthy relationship might seem boring. Less full of passion and unknown perhaps.

And how misleading that can be.

Here are two things I found taking the long road, though: Applause is a quick fix. And love is an acquired taste.

Real love requires work. Mundane work. Sacrificial work.

I honestly do not know whether I am up to the task of that sort of work in a relationship currently. I mean, beyond the relationships I already have in progress with my family and my friends.

I no longer believe love works like a fairy tale but like farming. Most of it is just getting up early and tilling the soil and then praying for rain. But if we do the work, we just might wake up one day to find an endless field of crops rolling into the horizon. In my opinion, that’s even better than a miracle. I’d rather earn the money than win the lottery because there’s no joy in a reward unless it comes at the end of a story.

When I read that (and other portions of Miller’s words) and look honestly at my deepest heart and fears, my truest me, I’m not actually certain I can do the hard work that intimacy requires.  (And, maybe no one is sure they are up to the task. And many of us who get married in our twenties never thought to ask such hard questions nor to search around for the equally hard answers. We just dove in and started something bigger than ourselves with too little knowledge. Maybe it’s a miracle any marriage of twenty-somethings lasts.)

It’s possible that I am beginning to fall onto the other side of the pendulum. To believe the lie (that feels like the truth) that there is no way for me to be truly known and loved with all these flaws. Because in your mid-forties you’re just not so naive as to think you are flawless. I am painfully aware of my flaws and I have a hard time believing any person who became equally painfully aware of those flaws would sign up for the long haul. The thought of being rejected – again – is really too frightening.

Another truth I was reminded of from this book is that dishonesty kills intimacy.

My marriage, more so its ending, was proof of that.

Of course, when I say this all – I want to echo another quote from this book. The idea that I can be wrong. (We all know this.) The idea that I can work out my thoughts and my feelings and my ideas in this very public forum. I can commit them to cyberspace – and then, later – I can change my mind.

I can be wrong.

I can say, “Hmmm. I thought that way then. I do not think that way now.”

What a gift we should all be willing to give one another – and ourselves.

I am willing to sound dumb. I am willing to be wrong. I am willing to be passionate about something that isn’t perceived as cool. I am willing to express a theory. I am willing to admit I’m afraid. I’m willing to contradict something I’ve said before. I’m willing to have a knee-jerk reaction, even a wrong one. I’m willing to apologize. I’m perfectly willing to be perfectly human.

Obviously, this book made me think. I journaled many hand written pages that I’m not going to print here (and I’m pretty wide open already with what I do print).

Maybe you’ve got some heart issues that this book would lay wide open too.

_________________________________