You came into my life. You taught me to love myself, every single part. You showed me a love so warm and pure that I thought it only existed through my circumstances and life-changing encounters. You were the one that had me believing in soulmates.
Never had someone so wonderfully compassionate and adorably goofy at the same time gone to such lengths to know me, understand me and indeed, love me. Even when I gave you nothing to love.
Now, it feels like a significant piece of my heart is missing. I still walk past families wondering, their children beaming with hope and joy, what it would've looked like for both of us to have that. To share a future together, our fates intertwined for eternity. To spend the rest of my days building a life with you.
Every day we shared, both good and bad, I cherished. I thanked God that I even got the chance to go through all those things with someone who complemented me in all the best ways, someone who brought out the very best in me. As you so very explicitly spelt out to me on multiple occasions, you didn't see me through "rose-tinted lenses", acknowledging all the parts that I still had to work on. Things like my ego, knowing when to be less blunt, and valuing others' time. Yet you never shamed me for any of those. You saw the aspects that made many others overlook me, dismiss me, condemning me to a life of insignificance. And you embraced them, for you knew that it was in our weaknesses that God's strength is made perfect. Your heart was so big and full of His love that it overflowed into my life, changing it forever. My own heart grew three sizes (yes, I love my Grinch references), and I truly loved you with all of it.
Alas, something so right but in the wrong season is still the wrong thing. Namely, God's intended season for the "right thing" to happen for us.
Ecclesiastes 3: 1-6 NIV
1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
We walked in the same faith, grew in similar directions. But we were not at the same place spiritually. And unequal yoke can be a debilitating factor sparking many non-negotiables in relationships, ultimately ending them before they ever get the chance to take off. Perhaps it truly is an inevitability when it comes to dating someone planted in a different church. You understood the significance and admired everything that I was involved in with my own spiritual community, my "fierce accountability and involvement" in my church's endeavours. It impacted and inspired you to start doing the same. Yet, we both knew there was a part of you that grew increasingly dissatisfied with me uncompromisingly always choosing to prioritize my church commitments over the ones I had with you, though I certainly did try my utmost to spend enough quality time together each week.
Evidently, what we want to accomplish and what we can accomplish are often two different things in reality. We valued many of the same things in life, from our passion for loving people down to our often unexplainable appreciation for all things Disney. But it's the two things (family and God) ranking differently at the very top that caused everything to come crumbling down.
We didn't value different things, we just valued those things differently.
My heart and visions are for the youths in my life, and to building people through the church. They belong to the lost sheep who once knew God, who have fallen out of that relationship and turned their faces away from Him, struggling to find their way back into His House and favour. All they need is a firm hand reaching out to guide them back, and I have been so blessed and honoured as to have had God doing that through me twice by this point in my budding Christian life. Suffice to say, I want to keep doing it. Over and over, at a high enough capacity where it can be said that I was a balanced Christian who still managed to truly live for the cause of Christ.
I want to watch the children in our care fulfill their dreams of becoming pastors. When my own children see all that our church has done and continues to do in this unprecedented movement of God, the significant battles fought for Him.. they will ask me: “Dad, where were you when all of these things happened?” I want to be able to say, “your father was right there, in the middle of the storm, fighting the good fight with his trench buddies.”
This past year, I found purpose for my life, and now I find myself in an impossible situation where I'm more willing to give up this seemingly perfect partner who has loved me so purely and fiercely, than to turn my back on the calling which my Creator has given me. I never would have imagined this for myself, to have become who I am today. And I have no idea how I am at peace with it. Breaking up with someone who has quite possibly been the the greatest (romantic) love of my life? Is it genuine because I am learning to put God first? I'm not entirely sure. My instincts and logical mind are screaming at me to turn back and not make the biggest, most unintelligent mistake of my life.
But the nature of God's plans are rarely fully known to us, if ever. He is an infinite mystery, one that we as His children have to learn to trust and embrace in order to deepen our relationship with Him. So today I want to come before God with humility, acknowledging that it is He that knows best, not me.
Every time I re-read your goodbye letters, I make a total emotional mess of myself. I may wonder, but I pray that I shall never wander. I'll just have to wait
and see if our sacrifice was worth it. For now, all I can (and will) do is trust.
"All I want is to live within Your loveBe undone by who You areMy desire is to know You deeperLord I will open up againThrow my fears into the wind"
- Hillsong Worship, "A Touch Of Heaven"
