The Shot

I wanted to take some time to write down the details of the realization of my pain today. It wasn't a brutal hopeless pain. It was more of a pain of a realization. In all of the intimacy and depth that Lindsay and I shared, I fell to my knees and cried so hard for her when she turned and walked away with complete indifference after all we had been through together. My realization was that this is how God must have felt about me this year when I chose to make all of my own decisions, completely disregarding all we had been through together. I'm not trying to say that Lindsay was wrong in what she did. We can't break things apart and wish that they be handled better than they were because they can't be. What is done is done. In all practicality, had she not left, perhaps things would have been much much worse. That is the best I can do to settle my heart over what happened, to be able to move on knowing that someone I shared so much with is no longer a part of a picture that I can see. It is the ultimate feeling of rejection, the ultimate feeling of pain, worse than death because death is greater than man's desire to stay or leave. Death choses for us. But this is a unique and deep scarring pain because it was by choice, by not being good enough, by not trying hard enough. It comes about by human error, whether in the scope of reason or outside of it.

Life will continue to be difficult and painful, and I will continue to grow more strong, more brave, and more wise. I am sorry that I fell so far away from what the Lord had planned for me. I have wasted so much time chasing my own desires. I knew from the very start, but I did it anyways. But the Lord knows how to break me for the best in me. I am reminded of my phobia of shots when I was a kid. It used to take several nurses to hold me down in order for the doctor to give me a shot. I tied myself to the waiting room chair once to get out of it, and it worked, but it wasn't for the best. The pain is going to come, but it can be such a good thing. It wasn't until I got really sick that I understood this. I remember being so sick that I begged for the shot. I wanted the pain because I knew what was going to come after it, relief. I can see Jesus in this. For my entire life he has had to hold me down to give me something for the best in me, and though I know this, I am too shallow to understand. But in great sickness I have begged for it. During the dusk of my relationship with Lindsay, I begged for it. I knew I was so far away from who I have always been, even if she and I stayed together, the man she knew was not me. She could have never known me, and I knew that more and more each day. We had no communion there.

So the pain has come. It lasts much longer than just a shot from a doctor, and it will scar to be a constant reminder, but it will heal. I will be strong again. I will be restored in believing that love does exist again. Perhaps now I can accept these trials as a gift instead of kicking and screaming.