from mine to yours
1) My first love broke my heart.
2) My true love broke my spirit.
…
?) But one day you will hold those pieces until they’re healed and I will call you my only love.
Image: Abondonded boats on the side of the road – California – August 2014
I miss you every day. And time will never erase my love for you.
But you leaving was the answer to a prayer I never dared to pray.
Do not misunderstand me. I still could never ask God to do what He’s done, but I look back in my journal and read the questions I wrestled with and I am grateful He saw it as good to bring us away and provide answers to our souls. There are some answers we could never have given each other.
Image: Walking with him in Savannah, GA – March 31, 2016
I’ve never noticed the number of scars before, but I have many. My heart was not left in one piece when you walked away. Perhaps it will never be quite the same again. But I’m proud of each scar. And I’m proud of loving you. I’m proud of who you were and who you are.
Love me or forget me, I’ll always be a part of you.
Love me or forget me, I’ll always be proud of you.
His love is like something I had forgotten to be possible.
But his grace and patience are like something I have never known.
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?