“How the hell did I go from planing a wedding to planing a funeral?”
This is a question I constantly asked God after losing the person who I thought I would spend the rest of my life with.
I was hurt by God.
I started surrounding myself with people who would help me drown my pain and suffering. They were helping me decorate the dagger that was in my heart instead of helping me remove it. Not wanting to be in pain anymore, and not knowing how to cope, I quickly became unhealthily attached and codependent on a close friend of mine at the time, who was also experiencing the hardships of life. We quickly became trauma bonded. After about a year of smoking, drinking, and having sexual relations with strangers, I finally started to sober up and recognize the consequences my actions were having on my soul.
I was hurt by myself.
I told a boss of mine at the time, who was more like a mentor to me, that I wanted to be completely alone. He listened, agreed that I needed space and healing, and encouraged me to pray. So, I did.
God listened.
What I thought was my best friend leaving me for some guy, was God, removing a negative influence from my life, that was causing blindness. He encouraged me to take off my rose colored glasses.
I listened.
I immediately felt the dagger plunge deeper into my heart. There was nowhere I could go in my small town that didn’t hold a memory with the man that I had loved and lost.
I cried; God listened.
I cried so hard I didn’t think that I would have been able to hear God even if He had been talking to me. But God did talk, and He had been talking to me, since the very beginning.
“Solitude.”
I quit my job and moved back home with my parents to create distance from my memories. I stoped smoking completely and started drinking responsibly, but I continued to stay in contact with a guy I had attached myself to, and again was codependent on, while in the aftermath of my love’s death. This is where I continued to fall into sexual sin. I reunited with an old friend; she is like a sister to me. We talked for hours, we listened to each others hearts, and we encouraged each other to continue following the Lord. She introduced me to her friends, holy and God fearing people. We would have good, clean fun together. But at night, I would talk to the boy, I would sin, I would hate myself, and I would hate the world. But I would never hate God. I looked inside of myself and saw I was the only one holding the dagger in my heart. God wanted to remove it, but I was scared to let go of the last familiar thing that tied me back to my “old lifestyle”.
God cried; I cried, “Solitude.”
After months, I finally broke it off. I had never felt so alone. It was not the happy and free solitude I pictured. It was not the romanticized freedom I had convinced myself of day after day and night after night. The danger has now been fully removed. But I had left it in so long that the flesh of my heart had healed around it, and taking it out reopened old wounds. I started to feel myself panic and grasping again, searching for that codependency I had become so used to. I desperately wanted friends but was having trouble making them as quickly as I wanted to. Out of frustration and loneliness, I would regularly end up in Adoration. In those quiet and intimate moments I finally started to understand God’s plans and desires for me and my deep longing and desires for Him. I finally saw that in my depression and desperation I was not seeking solitude from the world. I was seeking solitude with the Lord. And in this solitude God breathed these words into my very being.
“Have solitude with Me and grow in the deep friendships I provide to you. Those friendships will lead you back to me.”
God wanted to fully heal and restore every part of me. Not just my heart, but my body, my soul, and my memory. God is the only one I should be fully dependent on. Of course, sometimes the devil whispers lies, and I start to feel anxious. However, having been through it all, it has become abundantly clear to me that people come and go into our lives everyday. Some stay for a very long time, like family. Some are strangers, random encounters. Some people make life easier and more joyful, and others bring tears and sorrow when they leave. This is not God. God will never leave me, even when I am too blinded by the world and my own selfish acts of sin, He will still be with me. God is only good. He sits in all of my feelings with me, the good and the bad. He rejoices with me, and He cries with me. Through all of this, I am reassured that the friendships the Lord has provided to me will continue to blossom if I continue to lean fully on God, keeping Him in the middle of every relationship in my life and trusting in His judgment.
I am far from healed, but I now try and remember to walk in the dignity of being his precious pearl every day of my life. Let’s all start seeking solitude with the Lord, so we can come back into community and make His world peaceful again.
Jesus,
I love you! Please continue to harvest my heart, so I may do Your will and help others, like me, to harvest their hearts as well. We know you desire solitude with each and every one of us. Please give us the courage to answer and respond to that call.
Amen.
Love,
Your Pearl.