Broken hearted.

What a week!  It actually hasn’t even been a week, but it feels like an eternity.  Ever feel like life just sucker punches you?  That’s the best way to describe how I’ve felt these past four days.  I still don’t even know what I feel, or how I’m supposed to feel.  I go from feeling sad, to disappointed, to angry, to overwhelmed, to mad, back to sad, and at some points okay, but those moments to be honest are few and far between. 

Usually my writing is pretty put together, I don’t think that’s going to be the case with this post, so if you’re looking for something well versed, you may want to read something else.  I’m here to be honest, honest with how I feel, honest with my struggles, just honest, because that’s just me.  I don’t mask my feelings well, I’m not one to pretend just for appearance sake. 

So here I am. 8:09PM on February 19^th. My heart is completely broken in a way I didn’t think it could ever be broken again and as I sit here I wonder how long it’s going to take my heart to heal, and will I ever feel like me again?  I’m only day four into this so I know the wounds are fresh, but I’m already ready for the pain and the hurt and the sadness to subside, but it’s not. 

There are good moments in my day, school has proven to be a great distraction; there’s no time to be sad when you have 22 little friends needing you and constantly demanding your attention.  But, there are also quiet moments in the day when I’m sitting or driving and this wave of sadness hits me like a ton of bricks.  I’m instantly back in the moment, I can hear the words, I can feel the tears, and there’s nothing I can do but let the tears roll down my cheeks and pray that God heals my heart in a real and radical way. 

Heartbreak is killer, like I literally believe that if it could kill you, I’d be dead.  Sometimes I wish I didn’t care, a lot of times, especially here lately, I wish I wasn’t emotional, because if I was more like other people and less like me, I could just say, “whatever, you had your chance, walk away, move on, be done, and be okay.”  But I’m not.  I’ve been “blessed” with this “gift” of caring what sometimes feels like entirely too much about others.  When I experience joy, let me tell you I experience real joy, but the flip sad of that is when I experience sadness, I REALLY experience that sadness too.

Did you ever know that four days could feel like a lifetime when you miss your best friend?  I didn’t.  But I do now.  There have been so many moments of funny school stories, or random things I’ve wanted to say, that I’ve had to hold back, because the person I want to share the most with is no longer a part of my life.  Want to talk about something that sucks?  This would be exhibit A.  They always say you don’t know what you have ‘til it’s gone.  That couldn’t be farther from the truth for me, I knew what I had and lost it anyway.  What do you do with that where do you go?

I can tell you where I would have gone a year ago?  Out, out with my friends. Out to drink the thought of losing someone so special to me away.  Out to get attention from guys who do WANT to be with me.  That’s the way I would have gotten over this a year ago.  And if I’m honest that option has sounded more than a little appealing to me still, but I know it’s not know what I want or need. It sounds appealing because it’s easy.  It’s easy to go out and drink someone away.  It’s easy to dress a certain way to fulfill the “need” of being wanted.  It is easy. 

Despite it being easy, I know that no amount of alcohol is going to make losing someone so special to me any better.  I know that getting attention from guys at a bar isn’t going to make the longing of my heart to be with him go away.  It might feel better in the moment, it might temporarily take my mind of the pain, confusion, and sadness that seems to surround me, but I know ultimately it’s only going to add to the heartbreak I’m experiencing.  

I spend a lot of time wondering where exactly I am, and where to go from here.  And honestly I don’t have the answers to either of those questions.  But I will share what I think as of now. 

As of 8:31PM I am mess. I am broken. I am hurt. I feel lonely and lost and confused and like my world is never going to be the same.  While I know in my head and in my heart that God loves me and has a plan that is far greater than my little mind could ever imagine, the knowledge of that doesn’t diminish the pain I’m experiencing. 

I never went searching to fall for someone.  In fact, after the Lord changed my heart this July, I no interest in dating at all.  I was letting God mold me and make me, and I knew being in or pursuing a relationship at that point was not part of His plan for me and I was at peace with that.  I knew I didn’t NEED a guy to deem me worthy, for the first time in my life I was content and happy just being me. 

I’ll spare you the long story of how this all went down, but I will say that I built such a solid and God-honoring friendship with someone.  It’s quite possibly the most beautiful earthly relationship that I’ve ever had with someone.  That best friendship slowly in my mind began to transform into something else.  Something I never really wanted and it certainly wasn’t something I was looking for, but there it was.  I spent a lot of time in prayer with the Lord seeking direction and clarity, pleading with Him that if the feelings I was experiencing weren’t in His will for me that He would take them away.  He didn’t.  Or I didn’t listen well enough. All I know is the feelings didn’t go away, they intensified. 

The more time we spent together, the more that I was convinced that our friendship was leading somewhere special.  I was content, I was happy.  I felt like I was right where God wanted me to be. After seeking council from godly women whom I admire and trust, I knew it was time to seek clarity about where the other person was in our friendship.  That was scary for me, I wanted to know, but didn’t at the same time because asking opens the door to rejection, and let’s be honest, who wants that? 

I prayed about it and knew that God was putting it on my heart to ask.  So Saturday night on I-95 after many facebook messages from a friend and after a quiet five minutes in prayer with the Lord.  I did it. I asked.  I asked if he could see our relationship ever being more than friends.  And quickly and swiftly, I received an answer I wasn’t expecting or prepared to hear. No.  My heart sank, my stomach turned, I wanted to be anywhere but that car, if I could have disappeared right then and there I would have. No, One word, Two letters, probably one of the most painful and heartbreaking words that has ever been spoken to me.  I just sat there frozen and in shock.  It didn’t make sense, none of it made sense.  I replayed the past six months over the next thirty miles home, wondering how I could have been SO DEAD WRONG. 

I held it together for a while, but I received a text from a friend once I had told her his response that immediately brought me to tears.  She said,

“ Heather!!! God knew this!!!!  He has this!  This is a step, a step in the direction of His will.  You HAD to know…no need to waste your time and energy.  You are amazing!! You have an awesome heart.  There is someone who deserves that amazing heart!  He is worth waiting for!” 

The Lord totally used this sweet friend in that moment, because as I was sitting there in the passenger seat of my car, I was feeling totally rejected, worthless, and broken.  Her words were not only an encouragement to me in the moment, but continue to be words that I look back on and remind myself of daily. 

The rest of the night was no better, I won’t share the details of what was said and what happened, because to me they’re intimate, personal, and honestly in a weird way some of the moments I treasure most throughout our entire friendship.  Weird right?  Sitting there bawling my eyes out, I’m talking ugly crying, and those are some of my most precious memories.  It’s because it was real.  It was so real.  Although the pain has cut deeper than any pain I’ve experienced before, I was reminded of the authenticity and beauty of our friendship.  Words were shared that were real, honest, and true, and in that moment I knew that God was sovereign over this heartbreak. 

I knew that even through the hurt God had used this guy to help mold me and shape me into who the Lord wants me to be.  God brought him into my life at such a pivotal point in my walk and in my life.  I was craving real friends and He provided.   This friend challenged me in my walk with the Lord, helped me grow, prayed for me, called me out graciously on areas of my life that needed to be called out, loved me, and was Jesus to me.  I couldn’t have asked God for a better friend.  I truly couldn’t.  Friendship like that is rare and it’s a gift, and although I only go to experience it for a short time, I am so thankful.  I am so thankful that the Lord orchestrated our lives together and that I was blessed with an authentic relationship that was real and provided me with the truest sense of community. 

I think that’s part of what sucks the most, in fact, I know it is.  The fact that it’s over, it’s done.  The friendship that I treasured most is no more and that hurts more than words could ever explain.  You can move on from rejection, and eventually my feelings of wanting to be with him will fade.  But the desire to be a real, intentional friendship with him won’t fade, or at least I don’t think it will.  I think I got a small glimpse into the Kingdom in my friendship with him, I have a picture of what real community looks like, what being Jesus to others looks like, what really loving someone looks like, and what being intentional looks like, and it is SO beautiful.

As I sit here writing, I’m having a hard time being angry because the friendship that I was experienced, although it was short lived was without a doubt a gift from the Lord.  Some people are never blessed enough to find a friend that they connect with on the level that we did, and I was.  I can’t be angry about that.  Although I'm not angry, sadness at least for now seems like an appropriate response, no one wants to lose their best friend or such a beautiful friendship.  I know I have typed the word beautiful about a thousand times while I’ve been writing, but it seems like one of the only fitting words to describe what I’ve experienced. Our friendship was and will always be so beautiful, special, and treasured to me.

Lately, I have spent a lot of time questioning why God would allow me to experience such a tremendous heartbreak AGAIN.  I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what I did wrong to end up here.  And the answer is I don’t know.  I don’t know why my heart desired to be with someone SO much, and for the other person it just wasn’t there.  I don’t know how I could pray about a relationship with someone and not hear God telling me it wasn’t right, or to run.  I don’t know why God allowed me to fall, and fall hard for someone who had no interest in perusing me.  I just don’t know.  My only response to the confusion I’m feeling is faith, because honestly even with my faith and trust in the Lord it doesn’t make sense to me.

Where do I go? I really don’t know the answer to that one.  My first instinct was to run.  Run home.  Run into my mom and dad’s arms because it’s the only place that seemed safe.  I just wanted them to hold me like they did when I was a little girl and make it all better.  Sadly, even though I know they would if they could, they can’t take the pain away.  

My second instinct was to climb in my bed and stay there forever, and honestly I’m spent more time in my bed the past four days then I probably have in the past four weeks.  I know being around people is good and healthy for me, but my heart just doesn’t quite feel up for that.  I don’t feel like sitting around and being happy, because I’m not, and I’m terrible at pretending to feel something I don’t feel.  

Sunday morning, I thought it would be a good idea to run away.  Distance helps, or at least in my mind it does.  You can’t miss someone or want to be with them if your hundreds or thousands of miles away, right?  Wrong, but seeing them face to face the night after you bawled your eyes out in the car with them also didn’t seem like a great option.   As I walked around Martin’s with Anna, Hawaii seemed like a good option, Florida did too, reality quickly set in that I had a job I had to be at Monday morning and couldn’t just run away somewhere warm, no matter how tempting that seemed. (By the way…it’s still tempting)   

I quickly realized I couldn’t stop living my life just because my heart was broken.  I couldn’t hibernate in my bedroom, or run away to a tropical paradise, I had to face real life.  I had to keep living, so that’s what I’ve been trying to do these past four days.  Live my life the way I have for the past six months.  A lot of it right now is going through the motions, sometimes I feel a little robotic.  But I’m doing it.  I’m trying not to let the pain of the heartbreak or the awkwardness of “could-be” encounters stop me from being me and living my life.  It’s hard, harder than I remember heartbreak being the last time.  It’s not fun, it’s not easy and I don’t expect it to be easy for a while.

Obviously this isn’t a blog post that screams to the world that I’m going to be alright, but I know I will be.  I know God isn’t done with me, I know this isn’t His best for me.  I know that just beyond the heartbreak there is something MORE beautiful waiting for me than I could have ever dreamed for myself. 

So in the meantime I’m going to let people love me, I’m going to let my friends encourage me, affirm me, and help me along. I cannot tell you how overwhelmed I’ve been by the love that has been poured out on me over the past four days.    There are so many people who have facebook messaged me, texted me, called me, sat down and cried with me, and just encouraged me.  Thank you all for your sweet words and desire to spend time with me and help my heart heal.  You all are a blessing to me and I’m thankful for each and every one of you. 

Here’s the only plan I have going forward.  I’m going to cling to God’s promise in Romans 8:28 when it says,

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose."

I’m going to rest in Christ and who I know He created me to be.  I’m going to be okay.