These words swirl and bend around me like a carousel…….
Ash has been gone 6 months now, we stopped communicating after 3 months of hurtful words over the phone. These last 6 month have been the hardest in my life and also the most rewarding. The girls and I bought a house and I went back to work full time as the manager of a childrens clothing store. The girls are doing better every day….in school, with each other, at home. I think the routine of our lives is starting to create a space for healing. I miss Ash everyday and I still love him madly, but my heart has turned toward anothers love, a love that has revealed my deep wounds and my desperate need of a saviour before I can ever begin to love another the way they deserve to be loved.
Weeks after Ash moved to Hawaii I couldn’t get through a day without checking my phone, my email, anything that might connect me with him, keep me tethered to him, but he didn’t call or write. I hated him, I would call and leave horrible messages about how he destroyed my daughters faith in ones ability to stay and be trusted. I would tell him how selfish he was to walk out on them and that I would never forgive him. He would eventually call back, but would respond curtly and shut off. I would hang up the phone and weep. “F#*k my life!!! Everything bad happens to me”, ” why doesn’t anybody love me enough to stay?!!!!!”, I would scream this at the wall and slam my bedroom door shut. The emptiness in my heart was inescapable and crushing, the anger and bitterness I felt was suffocating, I was drowning in my loneliness, I throw myself onto my bed, unable to get up. “I stayed…..” I hear these words in my head like a hum, reverberating and vibrating though my soul, “I never leave…..”, I feel the words again. “I KNOW!!!!” obstinately I shout this into the air, knowing who the words came from. “But your’e not tangible, you cannot give me a hug, I cannot see you or feel you, so what good are you?” I begin to sob, I am desperate for human touch, desperate to be comforted desperate to feel anything other then broken and angry. “I loved him so much, and he left me”, the words push out like a groan. “Love never wounds, it does not attack, it is not hurtful…….”. These words swirl and bend around me like a carousel, the truth of them weighty and thick. “Oh God!!!!”, I cry, “I never thought about him, I only ever thought about my need.” The reality of this truth shakes me and opens me up again, I am undone and wailing like a baby. How did I become so hard? How could I have forgotten what purest love looks like? I am living proof of a love so expansive, so endless and full of grace, a love that is never ending and never fails. I have been forgiven more times then I deserve, without asking for it. I have been held by arms I could not feel, seen with eyes that I could not see, loved with a love beyond measure. My God never gave up on me, never stopped pursuing me, never took his hand off me. Can I trust him with all my broken pieces? Can I trust him with my life? Will I trust him if I am never again with Ash?