Anonymous here again! B is not thrilled that I told y’all I’m anonymous. I think it’s because we’re similar in our need to know all of the details, always. Secrets don’t keep friends. So if you are curious, I’m Kati.
More importantly, I’m beyond excited to share today’s guest post with you today. It comes from Abbie Smith, a writer residing in Savannah, Georgia. This post is actually an excerpt from her latest book, “Celibate Sex—Musing on Being Loved, Single, Twisted, and Holy,” releasing this February with Navpress Publishers.
I wish I could tell you how much I love Abbie! I first met her a few years ago at the Orange Conference where she was speaking about women in ministry. In some way only God could orchestrate, we’ve stayed in touch throughout the years. The best way I can tell you about Abbie is to let you read her writing. She has an ability to explain lofty ideas simply, and to express human emotions with words in the most beautiful way. One peek at her blog and you will know just what I mean.
To connect with Abbie, visit UnsteadySaint.
There’s not much worse than the petal that proclaims, “Loves me not.” And sad though it is, unreciprocated loves happen more often than the reciprocated kind. I was definitely the girl growing up who’d scoff at your boy sorrows and presume your love pains as lame. A few personal heartbreaks later, however, I can’t think of much that’s more painful.
The first time I got mad at God was during a breakup. This guy and I had done everything “right,” including following felt “promptings” to stay together. So when we broke up, it felt like God’s fault. “If You knew all along I’d mess up (or be messed up by) a given relationship, why did You allow it to unfold in the first place? Why do You allow, and even lead me, to date people, blessing our territories for a time, yet knowing full well a break-up song is in tune? Are You that obsessed with my growth that You’d hurt me so deeply? Or that undone by my lacking faith that You’d punish, ignore, or play games with me? Or is there something more delicate at hand here?”
I didn’t cry much as a kid. One night I did, though, was New Year’s Eve, 1989. I was traveling with my family, lodging at a Days Inn somewhere between Charlotte and D.C. Approaching midnight, my young senses were tiring, yet a fresh determination empowered my eyelids. “The end” was growing close and I was growing more and more desperate to stay with 1989. It seemed the end of an era to my eight-year-old mind, and I was devastated. How could it leave? How could it depart so quickly and never come back? Was it really never coming back?! I couldn’t deal with it. I didn’t want to deal with it. I was mad at the year. Angry that it would enter my life so richly and yet hold the audacity to depart. Tears poured as the television dropped the Times Square ball. I simultaneously made every effort to “save the year” by scooping its last breaths into a salad dressing bottle. In a flash, 1989 was gone. Death had confronted me. And like death, even when expected, breakups are unnatural, unexpected, and painful, because they taste like loss, which usually recalls other tasted losses. And they make us feel like we have been lost.
One of the biggest tragedies in our dating stories, or breakup sagas, is when we trivialize their processes to “natural.” I become a slave to my pain when I try to narrow its comprehensions to “logic.” Hovering beneath Christian jargon and hiding our authentic (God-given) judgment hides us from reality. Some days will be hard (like when you want to console, or be consoled by, an ex), and some situations are plain awkward (like seeing an old crush or seeing a new one with your old best friend). The alternative, however, is to stuff our pain in statements like, “I know God, so I shouldn’t be upset,” or “God always has a happy plan and future for me, so I’ve just gotta suck it up and move on.” Truth never modeled such a tale. To risk hurting one’s feelings, or risk handing over your real feelings, will usually be hard. But if God is true and truly Lord over outcomes (including feelings), we’re better off being authentically upset, heartbroken, and maybe even awkward, rather than maturing a lie.
God is all about holiness—showing us ours and drawing us toward His. So much so, in fact, that Scripture says His overarching will for our lives is holiness.[1] But what about when holiness doesn’t fix us or necessarily make us feel happy? And why is it that holiness seems to happen more often, even, through the likes of heartbreaks and breakups, than smooth-sailing life? Although sometimes holiness involves happiness, other times it involves suffering, unfulfilled longing, even societal persecution. Even in this, however, the challenging belief is that God is good and has His (and your) best interests in mind.[2]
Either God is good and for our good and knows what He is about, or He doesn’t. Either pain and death are the end of our stories, or they’re not. Successful dating should not just be classified as those who “get hitched.” Successful dating, or “courtship,” or life, that is, happen when a man and a woman are moved closer to God. Even in courtships that break up, then, or unrequited love that never requites, God’s hand is still initiating and pursuing and making something new. Sometimes God breaks up two good people with two good paths for no good reason. Except to draw us closer to Him.
[1] 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8; 1 Peter 1:15
I love this post Abbie. Thank you so much for sharing. I have also had my share of heart breaks and had much of the same questions. ‘God, why did you let this happen when I was doing what I believed you wanted me to do?’ Actually there are times now I look back as some of those breakups and I STILL don’t understand it… I still catch myself questioning God.
It’s in the moments that I can let go of those doubts and questions and just rest in his truth that I really find peace.
My dad once told me, “it’s not necessarily how much faith you have, it’s where you put your faith.” I think that holds true here for me; When I question ‘what God allowed’ in my life, I am putting more faith in my own discernment than the truth that God is good and he wants me to have the best life I can have.
Great post! I think we lose sight of the fact that God is good through it all . I know that this has helped to try and find joy in all things even the break up and honestly it just feels good to know I am not the only person wondering why 2 good people on 2 good paths with God in the center didn’t work out 🙂 thank you!
I am experiencing this aspect of walking with God so much right now. I think what you said is important- allowing ourselves to be ok with our true feelings about a painful breakup, rather than trying to trivialize it or showing other people that we are handling it and are 100% ok with what is happening.
I read an article recently talking about the stewarding of pain. We tend to either one extreme or the other- that of wallowing in self-pity, or in shoving down our feelings and trying to move on. Being a steward of the pain would mean being honest, and real, and sharing your experience, because you never know who else could be in a similar situation, or has been there already and can offer comfort.
Coming from this hard experience, I am learning as well that we can never seek to be perfectly happy, our problems fixed, or any lasting contentment on this earth. Happiness grows or shrinks depending on situations, and though we go through easy-sailing periods of life, there will always come another issue that needs to be “fixed.” The only true belonging, the only true happiness we will find is when we come home to the one who has been walking with us all along. And this is a sweet but sometimes hard reality to grasp.
Thanks for your words of insight, Abbie 🙂
I think so often as young women, we are so driven by the expectations of the society that we are in. We have been reared and trained in both the Word of God and that “we should be married with babies by 30″. I wonder how God feels about this? I am not so sure He likes the idea of expectations being put on His children that He did not place on them Himself.
With that being said, I did not grow up in a house that placed these expectations. I learned them when I went to college in the south, where an engagement by spring of graduation was the norm. To be honest, I thought it was absurd and would laugh at the girls who so desperately longed for that……..but as time went on……and is still going on…….I have become that girl. At the age of 26, with no marriage or children in sight, I find myself in this emotional pity party. This expectation that I once thought so absurd, is now planted in my brain and won’t get out. This leads to my questioning God…..”Why do You not want this for me?”…….”God it’s been really great just being You and me, but I’m ready for an earthly companion.”…….”Why did you create me in a such a way that men see me as undesirable (except for the freaks)?”
And so my heart longs, for that companionship, for a father for children that I desperately want. But in this longing…..in this hurt…..God continually makes it clear to me that His timing is perfect……that He is for me and desires to fill the longings of my heart, and that when He fills them……my companion and father of my future children will outshine anyone that I could ever imagine for myself.
Thank you. Currently feeling like the last of the “singletons.” Thank you for articulating this so perfectly and helping me see the light.
Ginny
What a gift to hear you girls process these topics…and to steward their pain with such grace.
Good stuff but tough stuff to hear. My desire for marriage seems to get stronger every day. It doesn’t help that my coworkers joke that I’m the next in the office to get married and they need to find me a man. Secretly, I like their interest in my love life, but perhaps it is because I hope they actually know a quality single guy that would be perfect for me.
My inpatience for what seems like God’s uninterest in my love life partially led me to try the online dating thing. It’s definitely a bit strange. But I figured, if God isn’t working to find me a husband, let me take the reigns. Clearly, His timing is perfect (even though I think it could be better). And even though He hasn’t provided in the way I have hoped and dreamed, I can only imagine how much bigger His dream is for me. Trust me, I have to force myself to believe this daily. And I don’t always have the faith. But I know myself well enough to know that God has His (and despite my doubt, my) best interest at heart. My heart wouldn’t be able to handle many breakups. So when my longing for a relationship begins to overwhelm me, I have to remember to be gentle on myself and trust that He has already written my story and will orchestrate the day I meet my husband.
Wow… Not only has this post been powerful and timely, but just the real experiences and thoughts of those who have responded, are real and a blessing. I can also, all too well, resonate with the feelings of frustration as it applies to love and relationships. Crazy enough, at the same time, I have this uncanny feeling of joy. The joy comes in knowing that God’s daughters (and sons) are choosing to trust Him, even when it seems to go against our “better judgement.”
I have come to learn, and continue to learn that, even in our relationships, God will and must get the greatest glory. I have also come to realize that God understands the deepness of hurt and love lost, as He set the first and biggest example through Christ. I have also learned, and continue to recognize that God pines for us, longs for us, and desperately wants our attention. It is then, when we turn our attention to Him, completely, and with reckless abandon, that we find our greatest companionship. And I’m not talking, in an instant a husband appears, I refer to – in an instant, His peace appears, and we finally breathe in Him. Of course, this does not come without continued hurts, in all relationships, as life changes, but most importantly, and like Abbie said, we transform.
As cheesy of an analogy as it seems, He has consistently reminded me of the transformation of caterpillar to butterfly. In it’s painful, and death-provoking transformation, the old self is instantly changed into something new and beautiful. Of course this comes with time, and the caterpillar must live part of its life as designed. Preparing and storing and absorbing life, which it will come to know no longer. But, when the time comes for the old self to be put away, wrapped, and protected for its most horrific, but beautiful re-creation, what must be, must be. If for a moment we try to help it externally, rush it, force it, it dies, is crippled, or is weak. But, when we(it) rests, only then can we break free, a new creature before Him.
If God establishes these same principles for the butterfly, how much greater that it applies to us!? His creations, being transformed by struggle, as our old self is stripped away, sometimes painfully, only to become something that much greater, freer, and alive is beyond words. All other things will be added accordingly – flight, life, in the words of Aladdin – “a whole new world!” The key, which I must remind myself of constantly, is resting in His trust. Only then, with eternal rest, do we find a since of release.
Dear women, I believe great things for you, without even knowing some of you. Dear Abbie, thank you for being used by our Creator to fulfill the plans He has, and the glory He deserves. He cries with us and for us, because He truly loves us with an unquenchable love. May His desires to keep our hearts close to His be our ultimate longing.
It is crazy how hard it is to relate to people in their suffering after a break up when you haven’t experienced it yourself. It is even crazier how much you suffer after a break up once it happens to you. Even if you are the one that breaks it off with the other, any relationship or person ripped out of your heart is the most painful thing. What a time of confusion, selfishness and just ultimate longing for a giant hole to be filled.
As I think about relationships that slowly die without the major break up, it can be initially less painful but with time comes a dull ache. God really gave us a relational heart didn’t he?
Thanks Abbie for sharing what you’ve learned to be true about all relationships, everlasting or not…God molds our hearts and lives through these intense and painful times. I used to regret relationships I had spent too much of my precious time on…but it’s not really my time is it? God is the controller of “precious time” and uh..I guess He knows what He’s doing, eh?
too often i think of times in my life when something didn’t work out as hoped as worthless (including relationships that ended or never truly began despite lots of time invested). i think to myself ‘why did i waste all that time!’. i think your words point out so poignantly that we can be realistic and honest about our losses (it is sad, there is REAL loss, etc) without counting them as worthless. in fact, they are the opposite of worthless as god uses them to teach us, grow us, change us. pain and hurt and suffering are all so much easier when we can see a purpose behind them (even if we can’t see that purpose specifically). thanks for your words and your honesty!
It’s amazing how much God cares for us and for sure there are no coincidences with God. He knew I needed to read this post and the comments are just as helpful. Thank you for sharing 🙂 Love it.