Have you even been so in love, that when it ends your heart just keeps going? It stops beating, drops and bruises on the brutal floor below, …but it doesn’t cease to be in love.

I dated a man for five years. Fell in love and planned my world with him at the center. As life sometimes does, it had other plans and we broke up. It’s been five years since that break-up — down to the day actually — and now I’ve officially been without him longer than we were together.

As the days drug on and on, never progressing, suddenly it’s 2016.
There has never been another boyfriend.
Never been another love.
My heart was frozen in time and memory.

And yesterday that was ok with me. Letting that part of me die and remain behind seemed the only way to cope with the new life without him. It kept the fears and pangs at bay.

But today I realized that leaving them behind is to leave one’s self behind too. The truth is: you don’t leave pain or fear in the past, you only leave the desire to fight against them. (Let’s face it: you fought against them before and they ravaged your life so why would you ever want to face them again???) So you accept your fate and move on, but now with less strength to face those foes. So when something comes against you, you move aside, face the other direction, or pickup a distraction. Anything to avoid a foe you now call master.

It becomes increasingly harder to dream. Harder to grow. Those actions would be in direct conflict with the one you now serve … so you move aside, face the other direction, or pickup a distraction. And so day in and day out you find new ways to avoid dreams and mute the discontentment within yourself.

But I pray for you and for me, that we find the strength to live in today’s excitements and not yesterday’s fears. That we choose to serve God, the loving Father, and not Fear, our ravaging master.

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.”
Matthew 6:24a

So decide for yourself which you want to serve and which you want to hate: God or fear?