Long Story Short
“We’re not compatible, and I don’t think we’re meant to get married.”
The exact words anyone wants to hear just three months into an engagement - sitting in their car of a Target parking lot, which may or may not be a step up from the first break up in a Chick-Fil-A parking lot, also performed in their car – right?
The words of my once fiancé were exact and honest, wanted and needed. Whatever we had become dissolved and transformed into a solid lead, plunging to the pit of my stomach and triggering all disfunction. I have never heard nor felt something so ugly and dreadful in my entire life.
Sitting next to him in that car, I thought my life was over.
We both knew if he opened that door, there could not be a third time for us - maybe after a little "promposal," but not the proposal from Prince Charming a girl awaits her entire life - so, we sat.
Confused, hurt, and broken, we sat.
Finally, I looked out the window - nothing in the sky, and a lot like no one beyond it. The words escaped the tip of my tongue: “I sure wish I knew what to do next.”
I said that, yet I had been planning my life around him for the past year. He was not just some boy I dated and giggled about my future with, under the stars. He was my future. He was a boy who promised me an entire life. He was my fiancé. He was next - even at that moment, no ring and no longer anything he wanted - I needed him to be next.
And yet, the words were daring to escape the tip of my tongue, as one who knew it was time to walk in the next good work prepared in advance for her, because I was rooted and grounded in a love who wanted to give me the abundant life, who had plans to give me, both a hope and a future, and who promised me blessings that would outnumber the stars of the sky…even if I couldn't see them that night.
As I drove to meet my once fiancé at that Target parking lot, I knew the Lord was going to do something different. Something new. I just never could have imagined it would be months of overwhelming grief and sorrow, sitting at bottom, having “lost” everything. But it was there Jesus reminded me of His promise in Matthew 10:39, “Whoever finds His life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
One weekend ago, I would have forfeited my entire life to that boy at an altar of ruins. But one year ago, today, the Lord reintroduced Himself to me and gave me an entire life I could have never imagined. And I can’t wait to share it with you – set free of shame, abounding in audacious faith, hope, and love.
