I’ve had some BIG emotions lately. My fleshly desire to react drastically clashing with my spiritual responsibility to respond.

Journaling has helped me to slow down in these moments. I write without filtering. I just let the thoughts flow straight from my head through my fingertips until the page is full, my mind is clear and my heart rate has slowed. It’s often a bunch of contradictions. Recently my ex reached out after having asked me to never contact or speak to him again. Below is a compilation of journal entries. A mix of “fleshly reaction” and “thoughtful response”. I often write these letters to people over the course of several days and never send them. Sometimes, after I’ve had time to reflect I will choose a sentence or two to share with the individual. It has helped me immensely to differentiate what I need to process vs. what is actually beneficial to the relationship.

Him: Hey I got 2 tickets to the concert this weekend, I can’t go I’m trying to sell them if you want them let me know
Me: You asked me to never contact or speak to you again. So please stop.
Him: You remember what you said right?
Me: I remember everything I said
Him: You lied to me then

YOU LIED FIRST.

You broke my heart and betrayed me. You committed felonies against me. You tossed me to the side like I was a piece of garbage. You mattered to me. But I’m empty and I don’t have anything left to give you. I want you to have a beautiful life but you didn’t want me in it. You never offered an explanation or a real apology. You never even made the smallest attempt at being a real friend to me. Instead you chose to be with a person who intentionally hurt me. So do not try to make me feel guilty for sticking up for myself. In an emergency I would of course still be here for you but I can’t be your friend. I can’t text like we’re cool when in reality my heart just keeps breaking over and over.

You broke every promise you ever made me. Now I have to break one.

I am really sorry to have to break it, I know how deep your fear of abandonment is and that the way I’ve been there for you has meant a lot to you. I feel terrible and I hate that I have to do it. I didn’t want any of this. After you texted a few days ago I’m sad and I’m hurting all over again like it all just happened. I cried for 10 hours yesterday while driving home. I’m not strong enough. I’m sorry. I pray for peace and rest and happiness for you every night and I always will. That’s all I want.

I’m not doing this to hurt you. I’m not angry. I have forgiven you for everything AND at the same time I’m still really, really hurting.

I’ve never been hurt like this before because I never loved anyone like this before. I don’t know how long it will take for me to heal or if I’ll ever be able to talk to you and not feel a sharp pain in my heart and a sinking pit in my stomach and have my eyes immediately fill up with tears. When I made all my promises to you that was before all this pain. It was before the trust was broken. I will never trust her. I have forgiven her but I will never trust her and I will never allow her anywhere near my life. She’s one of the biggest parts of your life. You chose her and that means you can’t be in my life even when I do heal.

Change is hard, but it’s inevitable.

You have my name on you. I have your handwriting on me. I will always be with you and you will always be with me. We are imprinted on each others bodies forever. Maybe it’s okay if we just stay in each others hearts instead of each others lives? We can just limit it to wishing each other Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday? If that’s all we ever are moving forward, it doesn’t take away what we were and what we had in the past. Nothing and nobody can take that away from us. We know what we had. We know it was real. We know what it meant to us. I wish we weren’t here in this place right now. I wish we could come to an agreement that felt good and safe for both of us, but I don’t know that we will. This is just where I’m at and I can’t change it, even though I wish I could.

My heart hurts. The kind of hurt that’s accompanied by the feeling of a 50lb weight on your chest, preventing you from taking a deep breath in.

The kind of hurt that only begins to subside after a good, long, ugly cry. But no matter how hard I try I can’t because I’m empty. I just have to sit with the pain and heaviness and shallow breaths. This is the result of hearing from you after we had agreed to stop contacting each other. This is how my body responds to seeing your number pop up on my phone unexpectedly. Now I’m forced to sit in constant conflict until my nervous system calms down. Logically I know it’s best to never hear from you again, but my triggered anxious attachment style causes me to check my phone every 30 seconds just in case I have a message from you. Anything to give me even the smallest sliver of hope that I still matter to you, that I’m worth something to you. Knowing full well that there is nothing you could say that would make any of this better. 

A verbal apology without changed behavior isn’t a real apology.

Telling me how good of a person I am, reminding me how I was the only one there for you when everyone else abandoned you, or that you’re in love with me and want to be with me… none of those things can make me forget how you treated me or make me feel safe in your presence again. They don’t change your heart, mind, or soul. Only God can do that. I think what kills me the most is that I never asked you to make me any promises. I didn’t ask you to keep me safe or to dream of a future together. You did all that on your own. YOU wanted to. You awakened a love in me and created a safe space for me that I wasn’t searching for. For what? What was the purpose? 

I’m angry.

I’m angry that I let you in. I’m angry that I gave you this much power over me. I’m angry that your betrayal and dishonesty has me questioning my self-worth. I’m angry that in all of this I don’t hate you, I hate me. I hate that in all of this I still choose my words carefully to protect your feelings. I hate that I apologize prior to setting a boundary with you. I hate that after everything, I still daydream about the future we could have had together. You, me, a house full of babies, with lots of land. Quiet, peaceful, and genuinely happy. That’s what we wanted together. Until you didn’t. 

At first I made excuses for you.

I chose to believe that my life was just too much for you as you tried to adjust to being back home. It was easier to accept that then the alternatives. I didn’t want to accept that maybe you were using me the entire time, or that you got home and after comparing me to other women decided I wasn’t deserving or worthy, or that you lied about loving God. No, it was easier to believe that my jobs and income triggered your insecurities. That the amount of time I gave to my jobs made you feel neglected and unimportant. And instead of communicating with me you fell back into old patterns and habits with people who made you feel like a man. But not long after you came home it became apparent that you were not following God and your definition of a man came from culture, not scripture.

So now as I look back I can see that as I grew closer to God, you turned from Him.

My heart was still longing for you, but yours grew bitter and cold again. Your insecurities mixed with the voices of the people in your circle got the best of you. But if you need someone to blame, I can be that person for you. All that matters to me is that me and God know who I am. Me and God know my heart and my character. I don’t need approval from you or anyone else.

You were supposed to keep me safe and protect me.

You were supposed to have my back. You were supposed to be my best friend. My partner. And if your feelings and needs changed you were supposed to be honest with me and tell me about it. That’s what you promised me. And for the first time in my life I thought I had found someone who really meant it. I told you I was scared but you told me I didn’t have to be. You said you were gonna show me different. You were gonna prove everyone wrong. And I believed you with everything in me. But you didn’t. And then you lied so many times about it right to my face. Over and over and over again.

Right now it doesn’t matter why you hurt me. It doesn’t matter if it was your trauma or you did it intentionally.

All that matters is that it happened. All that matters to me is that six months later my heart is still so broken that it’s hard to function or think straight sometimes. I’m trying so hard to keep it together and keep my heart soft and caring but sometimes I just can’t. My family is a mess. My finances are still struggling. My health isn’t good. And you still expect me to be there for you, like I owe you something. But I’m so broken I can’t even be there for myself the way I deserve to be right now. It’s not fair, life isn’t fair. I’m just trying to survive that’s all I can focus on. You’ve made it clear that you aren’t going to help me heal and you aren’t going to be my friend, so the least you can do is stop making me relive this.

I hope and pray that someday I get to a place where I can hear your name, see your face, and hear your voice and smile.

But right now, you’re just another person I loved and I gave my all to who lied, used, betrayed, and abandoned me and still expects me to be their friend. I need time and space from you in order to let it all go and to take care of myself. Until then be better. Go be great so when I am able to get past all this you’ll have stories to tell me that you’ll be proud of. I will always love you because that’s how God made me. No matter what you do, no matter what happens I will always, always love you infinity. I just can’t be around you or in contact with you until I feel whole and safe again. I’m asking you to give me the time and space I need to get there at my own pace. I love you. Goodbye for now.

“I can’t lose you”, you say to me. But I’m not lost.

I’ve been right here the whole time. You didn’t lose me, you knowingly tossed me to the side like a piece of garbage. The thing is, I’m not garbage. So you can’t come back and expect to find me laying there where you left me. I’ve picked myself up and moved on to a place you can’t access without God and changed behavior. When I made my promises to you they were between me and you alone. They were based on our monogamous relationship. They were based on the belief that we both loved each other and God. Those promises became null and void the moment you cheated and stopped following God. 

God instructs me to forgive but he does not instruct me to forget.

He commands me to learn from my trials and pain. So here I am taking a test in a class I never wanted to be in. I don’t expect you to understand. For a long time I was holding you to Kingdom rules. Expecting you to imitate and seek Jesus and it hurt when you didn’t. I couldn’t stop feeling like I was somehow unworthy of your honesty and respect. But I’ve now accepted that you don’t truly know God therefore you can’t imitate Him. You haven’t accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior and therefore Holy Spirit doesn’t live within you. I can’t expect you to live your life in alignment with Him and His word it’s not fair to you or to me. I can’t attempt to hold you to standards that you aren’t required to live by. But me, I am required to live by different rules. So moving forward I know my nervous system will be triggered more times than I can count and I will cry many more tears before this is all said and done. I will think of you often, I will miss you everyday and I will long to feel connected to you. Despite my feelings for you, I know what I must do. I’m not leaving you, I’m following God. 

My love for you is unconditional and everlasting AND because I love and obey God I can’t continue to give you access to my heart and life.

I know that when you love someone you don’t set boundaries. I’ve witnessed it. Your trauma has convinced you that everyone will betray and abandon you and that if you truly love someone you forgive and forget always, no matter what. You want to feel loved and needed and wanted so badly that you put up with abuse from the people closest to you. And in return you expect those you love to do the same for you. I know because that used to be me, it still is at times. It’s taken years of therapy and studying the word to begin to shift my mindset of what healthy love really is and to believe that there are people out there who won’t hurt and betray me.

Sometimes I find myself thinking, ‘as long as you’re happy I’m happy’. But that’s not true.

Even if you’re genuinely happy right now, I’m sad. My feelings and my emotions don’t depend on you, they depend on me; my past, my trauma history, my perspective. And with all those combined losing you makes me unbelievably sad. There’s no way around it. The way I dream of being loved is only possible by someone who knows and loves God first. It wasn’t fair of me to expect you to be able to consistently love me like that. I should not have put that pressure on you once I knew you didn’t believe.

When you first asked me what I was looking for in a relationship I told you 3 things…

Someone who loved God, someone who made me feel both physically and emotionally safe, and someone who wouldn’t disrupt my peace. Without the first one the other two don’t matter. Thank you for loving me as best as you could for as long as you did. Being loved by you early on really was the closest I’ve ever felt to being loved by God. Fully known and still fully chosen. It was beautiful and healing and completely unexpected.

If I could tell you one thing besides the fact that I love you deeply it would be this: that you are deserving of real, healthy love.

You deserve loyalty. You deserve respect. You deserve happiness. You deserve peace. And it’s all attainable. It’s real. It exists. But you need God. You can’t do it in your own power. And you’ll have to lose some things and people along the way. It’s terrifying at first, there’s a very real and tough grieving process that happens but I promise it’s so worth it. I lost friends and relatives, but I gained family and peace I never knew existed. 

Heavenly Father, thank you for this life. Thank you for waking me up each morning and allowing me to experience and share your love. Lord I ask that you transform my heart and mind to only desire you and your will for my life. I ask for your discernment and strength to stop lusting after people and places that are not filled with you. Give me the strength to break soul ties with people you never intended for me to have soul ties with. Help me to continue to love and have compassion for these people without lusting after them. Lord give me the strength to release him back to you. I know that only you can save him. If it is your will for me to be his friend, with or without salvation, please make it clear. My only concern is obeying you Lord. Help me to hear you, acknowledge but not act on my emotions, and to obey you. I continue to ask you to cover and protect him from every evil, and to allow him to experience your love, rest, and perfect peace. In Jesus’ name I pray. AMEN.