I WAS JUST THINKING: Another unanswered question: first love — mismatched

By Norma Adams-Wade

We all have unanswered questions that baffle us, and I have explored some before.

My list could be a duplicate of yours. Then again, it may be totally mine.

What wakes you up at night may put me right to sleep. That’s the human symptom of different DNAs.

But on this occasion it’s the middle of the night and I am propped up against my pillow pondering a conversation I had earlier today with two Gen Y Millennials.

We were at an event where they ran into each other after a long separation. They had been high school sweethearts, had a child, did not marry, but struggled to stay together because they cared deeply for each other. Those attempts failed, and they ultimately went their separate ways bearing wounds of sorrow.

Their shared offspring became both a mutual joy and divisive trigger. The two struggled over how to equally divide time with their shared blessing while living separate lives that displayed lifestyles of opposing opinions about money, jobs, and how to find their place in the world. Chaos ensued at every turn.

I was just thinking…why does first love more often than not bring cursed trauma that lasts way longer than the relationship?

This chaotic dilemma repeats itself infinitely in all parts of our globe that spins around the sun. From the four corners of the universe, this classic mismatch re-plays itself with the same brief joys and unending agony.

The unanswered and universal question is – why?

I personally believe in a master planner who orchestrated the universe. My personal question to that all-knowing creator could be considered equal to that other very familiar query you have heard people ask a million time: Why would a loving God allow good people to suffer?

I don’t have an answer to that question, and I don’t have an answer to mine, which is: Why would that powerful planner allow two people who care so much for each other to be mis-matched?

Bible believers use the term “unequally yoked.”

What’s up with allowing two people to fall so deeply in love, then puff …? All that thrilling emotion dissolves into chaos, pain, emotional suffering, tears, endless arguments, yelling, court battles, on, and on, and on.

Atheists tell us believers that we are stupid to begin with. They tell us that humans create the bed they lie in. To an extent, I believe that is true. But back to the mismatched couple that is “unequally yoked.”

Call it karma, predestination, whatever. But the simple concept would seem to make sense that love should not bring pain.

The dilemma of the separated Gen Y millennial couple struggling to love their shared child in ways that sharply clash has no easy answer. What was on the mind of a master planner who orchestrated the universe when this situation germinated? And what can bring solace to this divided couple where one has possession, and the other is forbidden access to a child they both love?

But let’s flip the coin a moment and acknowledge that there is balance in the universe.

We are not without hope. Former U. S. President Barack Obama reminded us that we must have the “audacity of hope” when we wrestle with complex issues. Let’s not give up on love, as controversial as it is, and it is, indeed.

We do not give up on the sun rising, the moon setting, trees setting down roots, and flowers blooming.

We do not question the soothing sound of Luther Vandross crooning a tune, James Baldwin turning a written phrase, or Simone Biles Owens executing a breath-taking physical maneuver.

That Gen Y millennial couple still has time to make the best of their mismatch, their “unequal yoke.” They can successfully live their separate lives — if they mature to the point where they see clearly that the happiness of their offspring overrides any grievances they have against each other. A mismatch can become a cooperative collaboration.

Norma Adams-Wade, is a proud

Dallas native, University of  Texas at Austin journalism graduate and retired Dallas Morning News senior staff writer. A founder of the National Association of Black Journalists, she is a senior correspondent for I Messenger Media. norma_adams_wade@yahoo.com.