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Grace and I live about an hour away from each other. Grace works in Austin an hour from her home and mine forming a giant one hour triangle of doom. I call this triangle of driving "a middle distance relationship." We are to far to see each other daily and to close for week long visits. This causes unique challenges.
Whenever I want to spend an hour with Grace I must commit two hours to the road. As you can image we hardly ever have short visits. This changes the way we interact.

Challenge #1 The Elimination of Spontaneity.
I’m a spontaneous guy and like surprising Grace. I have tried to surprise Grace in the past but it is not easy. Driving an hour only to find out she already has plans is the pits. I have to pre plan times to be spontaneous and work out conspiracies with her co-workers which, while fun, ends up not being very spontaneous.

Challenge #2 Non Intersecting Circles of Friends.
The center of our relationship socially is Belton. This means that we don’t have as much time to be with Grace’s friends. There is no way to adequately accommodate both communities as well as both families. We are courting not running for elected office. The result is that we can’t please everyone and must disappoint. The members of Grace’s church are not happy with me for pulling her away from their congregation but we need to go to the same church. Unfortunately, that means picking one not to go to. We hate disappointing people but we can’t see any way around it.

Challenge #3 Finding "Life on Life" Time Together.
Our time together usually turns into a big event because of the amount of planning. This is courtship not dating so we not just try to mesh our schedules with each other, we also mesh our schedules with over a dozen family members.

The result is that we don’t spend much time doing regular life stuff like folding laundry and doing chores. I think it is important to interact in these sorts of environments in order to get to know each other better. It is one thing to have a meal together and talk about deep things. it is another to spend several hours working together.

Yes I know we could make working with each other a scheduled event of some sort but that would in some way defeat the point.

Challenge #4 Expense
Unlike a long distance relationship in which couples hardly ever see each other, medium distance couples see each other regularly but at a great expense in both time and money. While talking about money on a courtship blog is unromantic, it is a part of real life. With gas at approaching $4 a gallon, driving long distances is not cheap.

The cost creates a paradox. We have to work more to afford to see each other, giving us less time to see each other.

Challenge #5 The Phone
Before courting Grace I never talked on the phone for long periods of time except to check in with my mom to let the family know how I was doing. Paying by the minute kept my phone calls short, punchy and too the point. The result is that I am somewhat awkward on the phone. Sharing what is going on in my heart is much easier for me to do in person than it is over the phone.

If an issue emerges on the phone between Grace and me we both feel more comfortable resolving it in person.

If you are a baby boomer and don’t understand why the phone is so awkward for my generations please see my post Generation Y and the Demon Phone.

Challenge #6 Serving Each Other
It is hard for me to serve Grace in the day to day stuff because she is so far away. If she needed help with a big project I could help her but it does not make sense to drive two hours to help her with a 15 minute task. This also means that it is tough to serve our families together.

Challenge #7 Bingeing and Purging
Grace and I tend to spend a lot of time together on the weekends and hardly anytime at all during the week. This creates predictable emotional high and lows. Not exactly preparation for a day to day married life.

We Are Thankful
We don’t mean to complain. In fact there are several unique benefits to medium distance relationships. But, if you want to get into a medium distance relationship these are the pitfalls you should look out for.

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Grace and I get this question a lot. Here is our official answer.

Courtship: If Jesus ain’t happy ain’t nobody happy.

• Courtship has a purpose and happens to be a lot fun. As opposed to being fun and happening to have a purpose.
• Courtship is about identifying martial compatibility.
• Courtship about honesty and intentionality instead of playing manipulative games.
• Courtship includes family and friends (in that order) instead of excluding community.
• Courtship spurs couples towards Christ instead of distracting them from Him.
• Courtship is about standing alongside each other serving Christ instead of facing each other thinking primarily about the couple.
• Courtship is not about rules. It is about identifying the true motivations of the heart.
• Courtship is about accountability. Not secrecy.
• Courtship is about pleasing God in physical and emotional intimacy first and pleasing each other second.
• Courtship is about treating each other like a son or daughter of the King. Not like an object to be used and used up.
• Courtship is about thinking of the other as more important.
• Courtship is about bringing families together, not about excluding the parents.
• Courtship is fun. Anyone who says it isn’t hasn’t tried it.

Happiness is a side effect of courtship. Not the goal.

Specific differences from dating (for us):

• Most of the time we have spent together so far has been with our families or with groups of friends.
• We see our families as allies, not as enemies or obstacles. Grace’s siblings are becoming my friends and my siblings are becoming Grace’s friends.
• We keep our parents in the loop and are accountable to them. I am learning that moms are a good source of advice when it comes to what women want. And more importantly what they don’t want.
• We don’t touch each other much. As a single guy, watching unwed couples hang all over each other made me feel uncomfortable. I don’t want to perpetuate that. If this courtship ends in a green light then there will be plenty of time for touching. If it ends in a red light we will be glad we kept our hands to ourselves. This doesn’t mean we don’t touch at all. Grace and I went to the Spring Formal Dance for instance. But we don’t touch much.

You may think we are a couple of fuddy duddies for our lack of physical contact and you are entitled to that opinion. But I will say that this has been one of the most exhilarating times of my life and I don’t need to have my hands all over Grace to have a good time with her.

I think Grace says it best:

“Courtship is allowing God to be the focus of a relationship instead of the couple being the focus, or the world of couples (culture).”

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Things I miss about Ecuador:

• The cheap food.
• The beautiful scenery
• The “I’m in the southern hemisphere feeling.”
• The mountains
• The clouds
• The excuse not to carry a cell phone.
• The flowers
• The people
• The taxies – no really, taking a cab is fun.

Things I don’t miss about Ecuador:

• The bacteria.
• The trash everywhere.
• The internet “connection.”
• Single ply toilet paper.
• The lack of modesty in advertisements…. and I thought we had it bad in the States…
• The feeling of powerlessness to effect change.

Things I appreciate more now that I’m back:

• Talking to strangers – You don’t know how often you need to until you can’t.
• Drinking Fountains – They don’t exist when no one can drink the water.
• Tap Water – I think I will glare intensely at the next person who complains about American water. I have been thirsty for the last week trying to find bottles of water.
• Naps – Siestas are a wonderful tradition that need to go farther south.
• Debit card machines – going cash only is the pits for a high tech guy like me. No electronic “paper trail” and keeping track of coins is inconvenient.
• Grace Chambers – Sometimes you don’t realize how amazing someone is until you can’t see them for a couple weeks.

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Grace Chambers and I are now officially courting. And by official I mean Facebook official. After several meetings with her dad he asked her if she was interested in starting a relationship and she said “yes.” If you don’t know Grace yet I’ll just say you’re missing out on an amazing friend.

I don’t really know much about courtship having only observed it from a distance. In other words I have no idea what I am doing. It is fun though, in that top of the roller coaster looking down afraid for you life kinda way that is..

You know when you are about to jump out of a plane and your realize that 10,000 feet is a lot farther down than you thought? You know that as soon as you step off that plane you will feel sheer terror and then either either a happy landing or splat.

Splat is not an ending of the relationship. Splat is dishonoring God. We don’t want splat.

I want this courtship to be fun and God honoring. I don’t think those things are mutually exclusive but blending them is a challenge. We live between two cultures. One values hedonistic pleasure over holiness. The other looks down on others with contempt and pride and sees most pleasure as some form of sin.

I will be blogging occasionally on what I learn as we go. Maybe you can learn from us and avoid our mistakes.

Risk
One thing I do know about relationships is that they are risky. I think the guy especially needs to take risks and that can be hard. When it doesn’t work out it can hurt, a lot. A good friend of mine took a risk in courtship and it didn’t work out. And while he honored God he is still in a lot of pain.

If relationships were easy would we value them as much? Or does the risk and the danger make them special?

Grace and I officially started courting on Wednesday March 12. Since then Grace has the flu and I am leaving for a different continent. The challenges of long distance relationships has just been multiplied by a factor of $2 per minute phone rates and 3000 extra miles.

I can’t wait to get back to Texas

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