Emma’s Story:
“I’m not in love with you,” my boyfriend said after over a year of dating. His words and the breakup that followed caused the world to shift under my feet. I could suddenly identify with Charlotte in Pride and Prejudice, twenty-something and headed for lonely spinsterhood.
In the months preceding the breakup, I had convinced myself I could make it work—I could love him into loving me back. But all I had poured out wasn’t enough. Not only had he withheld affection and affirmation, but he had even advised me to listen to podcasts to improve the things about me he didn’t like.
A wise friend once told me you can’t make goals for yourself that are dependent on other people. The truth of her words became clear after the breakup. I was so devastated I cried every day for three months, certain I could never be happy again. The best I could imagine for the bleak future ahead was some relief from the pain of being seen, known and not chosen.
As I cried myself to sleep each night, I woke up to a nightmare reality. The breakup had splintered my friend group and tainted lovely memories with pain. After making the decision to move, I sat on a porch in the mountains of North Carolina and read Psalm 84 as if for the first time. “No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly … blessed is the one who trusts in you.”
The idea of trust felt absurd. What an easy word to toss around when things were peachy! Was God really asking me to trust Him for good in my life? Trust is a muscle, and I was badly out of shape.
In that deepest pit, I understood something: trust is also a war zone. Trust meant believing with hope when I could only see darkness. Psalm 30:5 promises that though “Weeping may tarry for the night … joy comes with the morning.” My pilgrim walk through the valley described in Psalm 84—a place of difficulty—can also be a place of trust. In my darkest valley, God’s love met me vividly on that North Carolina porch.
But even though God’s presence and Word had come alive that day, my trust muscle was still weak. As I tried to move forward in the coming months, I also recognized my attempts to shield myself from further heartbreak, which mostly resulted in my being prudish. I was living out the either/or fallacy: give in to sadness and fear or numb myself to life with festering bitterness. Out of self-preservation, I wanted to avoid all painful spaces and people.
Walking one afternoon with my sister, I sobbed as I told her how there was this amazing man named Geoff in front of me, but I wasn’t ready or capable of dating him. Or so I thought. Yet God wasn’t going to let me settle for a numbed version of life. Gradually Geoff’s persistence and patience won me over, and his love and commitment for me became walking proof of God’s gracious kindness and love.
After Geoff and I were engaged, our decision whether or not to move back to my former town almost broke us up. How could Geoff or God ask me to go back to a place with painful memories? How could I forgive my ex when a small town would occasionally throw us together again?
I felt stuck in that old fallacy: choose pain and fear or choose numbing bitterness and unforgiveness. Then God spoke to me one day, ironically through a podcast.
“What if there were a third way?” the speaker asked. Could it be that somehow God would make a third way for my heart in moving back? Could He really be wanting to free me from the captivity of fear and bitterness? Could God strengthen my trust muscles even when I tended to fall back into my martyr attitude? If I let him, the answer to each question was yes.
So, Geoff and I are back in the town I never wanted to live in again. God loves me far too much to allow me to be plagued by my own bitterness and smallness.
“You’ll be able to forgive more the more you realize how much you’ve been forgiven,” my mom said to me over the phone recently.
Nothing like a raw piece of truth to dampen the smoldering coals of martyrdom. Thanks Mom. (But actually, thanks, Mom.)
Recently I learned of a need for meals for my ex and his wife, and I signed up to bring soup and bread. No profound interactions occurred. But God’s Spirit had calmed and quieted my soul, and this prodding to deliver a simple meal showed God’s determination to complete the work He has begun in me. By no means am I suddenly besties with my ex, but I am being restored.
I choose the third way—the love and goodness God alone makes possible in this life.
