Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends,
to which,
if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses
be departed from, the ends will change.
—Scrooge, A
Christmas Carol
Three years ago today I slept with someone on the first
date.
Two years ago I spent the evening with him at a fancy
Italian restaurant, fighting over another girl.
One year ago I curled up in the corner of the break room
at work, crying, demolished from his phlegmatic goodbye. And today, he is two weeks away from
celebrating his first anniversary with another girl.
Two years of our lives entwined and he was over me in a
month’s time.
What was I worth to him?
Nothing.
What was I worth to myself? Nothing.
 |
| Now you're just somebody that I used to know. |
I look back at pictures and see a girl who wanted to love
and be loved so badly. I see the sadness
in her eyes, the confusion, and the expectations that were never met.
Who was I? I was
the girl on the verge of coming to God.
And He took that relationship and used it as a Christmas Carol of sorts,
compacting my life—past, present, future—and showed me the expanse, a
life that would hang in the shadows without Him..
My past was crowded with men and screams of a broken
family filled my ears. Reliance on
others for happiness left me in a perpetual state of sadness and disappointment. My present reveals chaos, living in the
in-between. Living outwardly as a
Christian and inwardly of the world.
Lost and confused, looking for a light, but only one that would light
the path I wanted to walk down. My
future would be filled with dishonoring fights, God’s love absent from every
turn. Being hidden and unloved,
searching desperately for love in all the wrong places.
“I will live in the Past, the Present, and the
Future. The Spirits of all Three shall
strive within me. I will not shut out
the lessons that they teach,” Charles Dickens writes for Scrooge. Now I have a different present, and a different future. The lessons He taught me are
precious. And I will always hold those
pieces of my past in my heart, honoring what brought me to Him, because…
Three years ago, I didn’t know God.
Two years ago, I fought against God.
One year ago, I had nothing but God.
Today, my was, my is, my yet to come is vested no longer in him,
but in Him. And this is the happiest anniversary yet.
