After This Heartbreak, I’m Okay

Even if you see it coming, even if the signs are there, you’re never really ready for someone to break your heart. You can hold “but even if…God is still good” close to you so you’re prepared if things don’t go the way you hope, plan, dream, but you’re never ready.

This isn’t the first time I’ve found myself here, but what I’m discovering is “here” looks different this time.

Today, here is good days and bad days. Here means reminding myself to speak kindly. Here is ignoring you. Here is living within the broken pieces of my soul until they’ve been bandaged up. Here is finding healing in my anger. Here is knowing the end of this story before I start the journey because I’ve been here before. Here means walking fully and completely through whatever I need to, and not worrying about how that may affect you.

I’m not forced to look at life through the shattered pieces of my soul. I’m not begging God to rescue me from despair. I was told I would feel broken but this will not break me, and that rings true. I know what it is to be broken and I refuse to go back.

This time, I will bend but I will not break.

Breaking means you consumed me. It shows I gave you parts of myself I can’t get back. This time, though, that’s not true. You were a piece of my life but you were not my entire life. I loved you but I won’t forever, and I see that now. I can take the good memories and one day remember them fondly rather than erase them completely.

I chose to walk through hell to get where I am today because I knew what God had waiting on the other side was more than I could ever imagine. It took months, years, to get to a place of surrender with the last broken heart and, this time, all I had to do was reach up and grab His outstretched hand. I knew I didn’t want to stay where I’d been left. I want to find freedom and wholeness, and that’s only found through surrender.

I keep fighting because I’m stubborn, but also because I want to stay angry. Angry means pushing aside the hurt and residual love. I can briefly forget the plans we made together. But staying angry makes me more exhausted than anything and the reality is you don’t deserve that much of my time. So, I’ve had a few months to sit on this and I’ve continued to have good days and bad days, but I want you to know that I’m okay.

I’m okay because the reality is, this time, I’m stronger.

I am stronger than this heartbreak. I am stronger than my insecurities. I am stronger than the bad days.

I am stronger than this and, in the end, I am stronger than you.