If there ever was one thing she was afraid of, it was love.
She hadn't always been afraid of it. Just like any other girl, she longed for that Prince Charming; the one that she'd look at and love, and the one she would marry. She'd dated a few guys, had a few broken hearts and broke a few of her own. She eventually grew weary of the process and gave up looking for her Prince Charming.
Well, of course, that's when her McDreamy came along.
She had just finished up high school and had committed a few months earlier to traveling the summer being a counselor at different camps. As the summer began, she started to date her McDreamy.
They were very similar. They could look at each other across the room and know exactly what the other person was thinking. They laughed and acted completely goofy around each other in just about every way possible. They shared awkward moments together because they were both moderately awkward people. They stayed up through the night talking, dancing, laughing, crying and sharing secrets with each other that only 5 a.m would ever see. They shared intimate moments together like this one:
He took her home to where he grew up. His brother had cystic fibrosis and had passed away a few months earlier. His family had made his room all about the Colts, his brothers' favorite football team. He took her into his brother's room and let her have a glimpse of the love that he had for his brother.
They shared those moments of intimacy together. They shared romantic moments. Those moments that girls always dream about. You know, like laying In a hammock and looking up at the stars. They did things like that. They talked about their dreams and they dreamed together. They prayed together and they talked about God together.
They were together everyday for seven weeks.
It seemed perfect.
The summer started coming to a close and the camps eventually ended. Everything was going better than she had ever imagined especially after just meeting his entire family.
About two weeks after the last camp ended, he broke up with her.
He said it was inevitable. He said things like, "We were just moving too fast" and "there's no point in prolonging the inevitable".
The worst part of it all was that she had no idea that it was inevitable in the first place. She was just a girl who had fallen in love with her McDreamy, the guy who she thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with.
See, before him, she'd been very skeptical of guys and relationships. Then she fell for McDreamy and everything changed. She no longer wished to be with anybody else. No other guy was even an option anymore. There was no room in her heart for any other guy. It was him.
That was, until the "inevitable" happened.
Having been with him everyday for seven weeks, away from her friends and her family, she never told anybody much about him or what they did together. She never really had the chance since he broke up with her soon after they returned from the camps. And once he did break up with her, she never talked about it.
And if she did, it wasn't for very long.
She went on with her life, although scarred, she relied on God to be her joy throughout the day. She knew that without allowing God to be her joy, that she would only dwell on what had happened. She began understanding what it meant to let God be her rock and her place of safety, her strong fortress and her peace.
Life went on and she only thought of McDreamy when she was forced to, keeping her memories and thoughts of him suppressed inside of her.
Guys started showing up in her life again, but she would shoot them down without giving them much of a chance. She wasn't about to let a guy come into her life again. She wasn't ready for that. She wasn't ready for love again. She started shutting off anybody who really tried to love her at all.
Because if there was ever one thing that she was afraid of, it was love.
-------------------------------------
If you made it through that whole story and have no idea who it was about, I am quite impressed.
Because the girl in that story is me.
Up until last weekend, I didn't realize that love, of all things, was the one thing that I am afraid of. Seriously though, think about it. Everybody likes to be loved, hear they're loved and feel like they're loved. It's human nature to want to and to like to be loved. Somehow, over the past ten months, I've gone from falling in love to subconsciously repelling love like it's a deadly bug.
I stopped really accepting compliments from my friends. I've turned down almost every guy that has shown any interest in me.
I haven't even let God love me.
That's the main reason for this post.
A week ago this past Saturday night, I was in Oklahoma taking part in a late night worship session. During this session I was asking God why I feel like He hasn't shown me anything huge since we arrived in Oklahoma. Of course, that's when God decided to show me what I feel like He's been wanting to show me for a long time.
I heard Him say, "How do you expect to love others and to let others love you if you don't even let me love you? You come to me in worship and tell me 'thank you', 'you're amazing', 'I love you', But you've stopped allowing me to love you. It's time for you to let me love you."
I instantly started crying and held my hands out in front of me to receive what God had for me. As I did this, my hands felt heavy. God put an image in my mind of a sword being placed into my hands.
Then He said to me, "All of those feelings you've suppressed from everybody about your past, you've fought to hold them in on your own. You've used all the strength you have to keep those memories and the hurt inside of you. Here is a sword, let me fight them for you. Sit back while I fight and just let me love you."
That's when I realized that the wall that I put up was ten times worse than I had originally thought that it was.
Sometimes we keep feelings and memories inside of things that we don't want to remember and that we don't want to affect us. We keep doing our daily-thing and don't even realize that the longer that we keep it all in, the more bricks that we're adding to the wall we're building inside of us.
I thought that when God told me all of those things that He had completely knocked down the wall and that now, I could move on with my life as if there was never a wall there in the first place.
I was wrong. The rubble from the wall breaking is there at the bottom and now all of my insecurities are showing. Honestly, it's not even something that I really was going to write about and put into my blog. I had finally gotten to the point where most people, including myself, believed that I had completely healed from the heartbreak I had experienced. Why then would I want people to know that I am actually still healing from it?
But for some reason, I feel that God has laid this on my heart to share.
Some of us just need to allow God to fight those internal battles for us.
Some of us need to just let God love on us. We need to let Him tell us that He loves us and to let Him tell us that we're worth it.
We need to let God love us in order to fully comprehend the way that He loves His children.
We need to let God love us so that we may love the way that He loves.
Let God love you first.
///////
This post originated from Alyssa's blog God. Love. Life where it was originally published January 27th, 2014.
-----------------
Thank you for reading. If you were blessed, I would encourage you to share this.
Subscribe to our email list here:
Me In Perspective Email List Signup