I've spent the last three days laying my head down at night on a huge pillow that tweaks my neck, and waking up with back and shoulder pain because I feel like I'm sleeping on a wooden board, in a room that has little to no ventilation and is packed to the brim with items that my brother hasn't yet moved out after his wedding last month.
I came home from California Tuesday evening, pretty beat up.
Not broken; I have felt that before. But beat up.
It isn't difficult to believe that my parents welcomed me home, with all the love and support they could muster, and have picked me up and set me on my feet every time they've found me on the ground crying the past few days, dusted me off, contacted the people I needed to know to get a job, and have loved me up enough to help me see that I can be successful at this new hard thing.
You see, I thought I was going to marry him.
I was willing to wait as long as I needed to so that he could get to that point.
Those beautiful blue eyes had loved me more than anyone I ever thought could love me; they had brought me nearer to God than I knew a boy could bring me to God, especially one I kissed so much. He was so good for me; in fact, many would say, and I thought that God had said, the perfect fit.
My parents cried when they found out that it was over. His mom did too. In the end, there was too much holding him back to say yes with his whole heart. And so he let me go.
I have done hard things before, where my future really has no meaning to it anymore and everything I wanted more than anything was taken away from me. This pain is not unfamiliar. I know how to mourn. Actually, as I go through and read this blog, it seems that it has become a place where a lot of my mourning is recorded.
It's hard when it feels like your heart isn't only broken, but that the person you lost actually walked away with it, damaged and crushed, in their hands. And tore you in half on their way out.
But today I got a glimpse of the future that will help me separate myself from the nightmarish torture that the last 10 days have been. I was interviewed and hired to be a CNA. Best of all, I work only 32 hours a week now, in a place that carries no connections to my love, in a situation that I am not suffering through so that we have enough money to be married soon, with employers that don't treat me like I am a bad person or are overly condescending to me, but respect me and my privacy and my time.
I am rebuilding a future without, what I thought, was such an essential part: him.
I can trust God. I can trust God to do what He needs to do to bring me happiness again, and to heal up the wounds that leave me feeling like half a person, and to teach me what I need to learn while it's happening. The trick is to not rely on trusting God to bring back to me what I want more than anything else: him. Because that isn't trusting God the right way- that is trusting that God will do what I want Him to do. And I have learned that it's best to simply trust God enough to do what He needs to do to make us happiest.
I feel regret that he could only be in one chapter of my life, and not all of them. I wish that somehow I could have been at a point, and he could have been at a point, where we were both ready to make each other integral parts of the rest of the chapters.
I know that I don't understand. And I know that I won't for a long time. But I know that, just like ending my mission early, I won't regret that I didn't get as much time as I expected I would with something I had come to love more than anything in the world; I will be grateful that I got more time than many people ever do to experience a beauty I never knew existed.
So thanks, for loving me for 10 long months. I'll try to stop praying for you, but I don't know how long that will take, especially considering you were the first and last thing I ever prayed about anyways. You were everything to me. But I am brave enough to walk away because you have asked me to. I can do that.
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