Disenchantment

I had promised that I would write only once a week, but today, as the feeling washed over me for what felt like the hundredth time in the past few weeks, I knew I needed to let it out before it festered and swallowed me whole from the inside out.

About a few months ago, I experienced a feeling of betrayal from someone I thought I had found a new, promising friendship that would last a lifetime. Now, in the next weeks I will draw from this experience to speak on a series of disappointments that hit me all at once and left me completely shattered and at the feet of my God and Saviour, an experience that, in retrospect, I am grateful for, that if not for anything else, provided me an even closer relationship with my Creator and an understanding that I needed to hold on to Him like I would drown if I didn't, because now, more than ever, I understand that I absolutely would drown right down to the depths of the waters of nothingness if I didn't. But I digress...

This person, for whom I had made sacrifices for personally, but none of which I hold against her, had hurt me so deeply by her actions and lack of consideration for me, that I found myself withdrawing, questioning so many things, the unfairness of it all, that someone could be so selfish, and walk happily away into the sunset without so much as looking back at the disrepair left in her wake. I was broken, truly, and even though I knew there was a lesson I needed to learn, it didn't make this pain any easier.

I had, a few weeks ago, started on reading the first book of Samuel in the Bible and had wondered, at so many instances, how King David could put up with so much betrayal from someone he'd held in such high esteem. David looked upon King Saul as something of a father to himself, and oh, did he love King Saul, but to escape death at the hands of the same person you loved and honoured should at least cause some form of disillusionment in David, however, I saw no disenchantment in him, instead, his love, allegiance even to this king rejected by the Most High still stood strong, even until Saul's death.

I thought back on Samson, well at least he got his day, destroyed the ones who incapacitated and chained him. I reflected on Moses, taking the Israelites at God's command right out of Egypt, only to face untold betrayal and difficulties at the hands of what I have decided are some of the most insufferable, tough-to-please people the earth has every carried upon its aged plains. And still he kept going.

But David stuck with me, maybe because he was my most recent read, or maybe because, truly he displayed god-like graciousness toward this man, and it comforted me, that somewhere, in space and time, Yahweh saw this moment from where He sat, and made it so events could align to nudge me toward reading the first book of the Prophet Samuel at that very moment in time, so I could see myself, my situation, in a man who lived thousands of years before me, and know that whatever action I'd choose to take in the end, that I could be gracious if I wanted to be, hard as it could or would seem.

It has hurt like a boulder directly to the chest, much like the pain I felt the first time I'd gotten my heart broken; like my heart was racing a million miles an hour, thumping beyond my control, like it needed to get right out of my chest and run as far away from the pain that resided inside. I felt true agony. I still feel it now as I write this. It hurts, truly it does. But, if there is anything I have learnt from years gone by and from the past few months, it's a pain that feels like forever in the moment, but will not outlive this side of eternity.

The lessons, perhaps not all, but for the most part, have most certainly been learnt. But it doesn't make the pain any easier. The consequences of her actions still remain and the fact that I now must pick up the pieces left in my hands and rebuild by myself and for myself still glare at me every waking day for the meantime, but I do know that though love must remain, I must also choose myself, and, like David ran, I too must run, as far away as I can, from anything that does not feel right and takes away my peace, I must not run from the pain, but I must run from what causes it; I will be gracious, but I will choose myself.

I will stay selfless, but not without unabashed love of myself, because it is not only necessary, it is right, and because as I love me is as I must love others, and because God First Loved, I can open my disenchanted heart and still make room for these two gems; love and grace.

As always, Love and Light...