Day 27

I was at work when I saw him.

He didn’t look at me when he walked in, and he never would.  He wore a business suit, which was unlike him, but he had on his signature baseball cap.  I groaned inwardly, both sad and angry.  He walked to the back counter to fill out a deposit slip, and while I waited to come face to face with him, a lady stepped into my window.

She was gorgeous.  Long, black hair.  Full lips.  Skin the color of rich chocolate.  Tall like a model, and her accent suggested foreign roots.  She was the epitome of beauty—but she was also unprepared, and this stirred up even more aggravation in me.  As she took her time organizing her deposit, the lobby began to fill with customers.  The longer they waited the angrier and more impatient they became.  More followed until there were hundreds—and I could no longer see him anywhere.  Panicked, I desperately wanted to help each of the awaiting customers, but I was stuck.  The lady in my window did not move.  She paid them no mind, and they waited, enraged, voicing their complaints.

Finally she placed her transaction on my counter, crumpled bills and a handful of coins multiplying my irritation.  I scooped up the money and, with a heavy sigh, began to count.  Foreign coins were mixed in with her American money, and I began to tell her I couldn’t take them—but instead I sorted through them.  One looked like a dime, but wasn’t.  Another resembled a quarter, but wasn’t.  And the next coin I touched stopped me completely.

This coin was different from the other two.  Where those were decorated with vines and birds, this one was engraved with two hands.  Reaching out to me.  I picked the golden coin up and held it between my fingers.  Intrigued, I began to ask her from where it came, but something stopped me.  I looked down again at the coin, at the inscription that had seemingly just appeared:

In God’s Hands

Taken aback, I looked up, intending to demand to know its origin.

But she was gone.  And so was the crowd.

And I was left with an empty hallway, and a solitary golden coin.

Last year, when I made the decision to become Christian, Satan was angry.  Don’t believe he exists?  Sorry.  He does.  He has one goal, and that’s to keep you from God by any means possible.  And he is never more invested in destroying you than when you’ve wholeheartedly decided to change your life. 

He will attack you, doing anything to make you doubt God.  Each person is different.  For me, he met me in my dreams, tormenting me with images from my past and dreams for my future.  I would wake up, my entire person changed, because I had spent hours asleep, experiencing Hell.

Within this last week, the nightmares returned.  Full force.  So, last night before I went to bed I prayed to God to protect me.  Every morning this week I would awake exhausted, and I couldn’t bear to experience the same pain again.

As my alarm sounded this morning and my eyes opened, I was speechless.  Thankful, and in awe.

As Day 27 comes to an end, I am determined to persist.  I will not fear the terror of the night, because He is with me, guarding me, protecting me, and pushing me onward, upward, forward and away from darkness.

Day 18

Oh the things lovers do when it's over

Oh the things lovers do when it's done

Find a cool bottle or a warm shoulder

Wake up older

And try to move on

Ask me who I was a year ago and I’ll tell you to listen to this song sung by Julie Roberts.

After a year of avoiding it, tonight I finally clicked My Documents and sought out my picture folders from 2009 and 2010—the disaster years.  Fear of reliving that pain has kept me from looking through them these last eleven months, but tonight God urged me to center my cursor and double-click.

I came face to face with myself.  I saw fake-smile after fake-smile, each like a band-aid trying cover up the wounds on my heart.  Each grimace was an attempt to mask an emptiness—an overwhelming sense of sadness and confusion.  I relied on men to pull me through life, literally.  I would die for attention.  I was beyond broken, the girlfriend of a man who hurt me every day.  And I was fine with it.  I thought that was happiness—or as close to happiness as I could ever experience.  And so I stayed.  Broken nights in hotel rooms, drunk nights at dance clubs, fights about infidelity, lowered standards and feelings of loneliness, confusion, and insecurity were all I came to know.

I’ve held so much pain over those two years of my life.  The mere thought of him used to bring me emotionally to my knees.  But I looked at his face tonight.  I looked over our memories.  I saw our life together.  And I mourned.

For the first time I mourned not for the loss, but for how lost we were…how lost I was.  Somehow the pain transformed itself into sadness.

This forgiveness stuff isn’t easy.  There is so much aching, self-examination, reconciliation, and sadness that must be experienced.  It’s not easy.  And I don’t like it.  But it’s the baby steps that move us along.  As the time comes for me to mourn and forgive each of my broken relationships, I just pray to God for strength to relive important moments, examine my decisions, and find the roots of my heart motives.

Is it really better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?

Yes.  Even through this bitter pain, I say yes.

Because it is only through pain we are forced to grow.

And I so desperately want to grow that the pain is becoming worth it.

And so I move on from yesterday’s news and turn away from him, leaving behind, but remembering, everything that was.  With the closing of another chapter of my life, I am more determined than ever to be stronger than the girl who once looked at me from behind the mirror.

Doesn't happen overnight, but you turn around and a month’s gone by,

And you realize you haven't cried.

I'm not giving you an hour or a second or another minute longer.

I'm busy getting stronger.