How to let go (of a heartbreak)

Don’t let it go the way you like doing, by saying, “Yes, it’s in my past, yes it’s gone, or yes, I wouldn’t like to relive it again.” Let it go through Him, through Christ, knowing that He gave up all that He had so that He could have you and so that you could apprehend Him. Let it go the way you let go of your sin when you walked into His love and eternal life, the day you believed that Jesus is the Son of God.

Let go.

All that was said and wasn’t said, all that you invested and didn’t invest, all the love he gave you and the love you poured back, the heart he tore apart, the way you fell for him over and over again, the way you lost yourself in his love and his embrace and his kisses. Let it all go. Let it all go the way Jesus did on the cross, when he cried, “It is finished”, because it was, and it is. For you. Now,

Let go.

Let it all go into God’s arms, because He died for a reason, and you need to start living like He sacrificed His life for something more. Let it all go into His arms because He said you should give Him that pain, because His yoke is easy and His burden is light, because by the stripes of Jesus you are healed. You can’t carry this load with you anymore, your knees and your back can’t take it anymore. Neither can your heart.

Let go.

Let go and focus on finding you, the real you that you can only see when you begin to look at yourself the way your Father looks at you, not the way that he ever did or the way that he ever will. See yourself in your true beauty, not the beauty of your Afro or your jewelry or your chic style, not the beauty that you saw when he hugged you and said you are beautiful. See the beauty of your inner self, the unfading beauty of your gentle and quiet spirit, the one that is of great worth in the sight of your Father. See yourself in this beauty and let it arise within you, let it come to life and invigorate you with the Father’s presence. You are beautiful as you are, as He made you, fearfully, wonderfully, in His image, not by the words of his mouth or the touch of his lips. There’s nothing that he added or took away. There’s nothing he could ever add or take away.

Let go.

Let it all go and fall in love with yourself. Fall in love with the woman you were called to be, the woman you were created to be. Fall in love with yourself as you grow in love, joy, peace, patience kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control, when from the overflow of your heart your mouth sings a melody to the Father, when your heart beats in harmony with His and you are so hidden in Him that you wonder how wholeness could taste this sweet. When it doesn’t matter that he had let you go, that he had moved on too soon, that he never thanked you for the flowers that had bloomed because of your presence, never acknowledged the fears that had been overcome because you had said you would hold him through the night.

Let go.

Let go and count it all loss. You were not created for him. You were created for Him, that you may become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly, and that you may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection, that you may so share in His sufferings as to be continually transformed in spirit into His likeness even to His death.

Everything else is dead weight.

So let go.

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Further reading as you let go:

General life:
A Woman After God's Own Heart by Elizabeth George
The Lady, Her Lover, and Her Lord by T.D. Jakes

Thriving not surviving singlehood:
Sassy Single and Satisfied by Michelle McKinney Hammond
The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass by Mandy Hale
Lady in Waiting: Becoming God's Best While Waiting for Mr. Right by Jackie Kendall and Debby Jones

Dating:
Secrets of an Irresistible Woman: Smart Rules for Capturing His Heart by Michelle McKinney Hammond
Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship by Joshua Harris

Blogs:
True Love Dates
The Single Woman
Heather Lindsey

Pinterest:
A Woman After God's Own Heart

The Greatest Love I've Ever Known

She lived her life
loving Him
beyond oceans

He was her shield
Her very great reward

The Greatest Love she's ever known.

His favour will last us a lifetime!

The "Grievable" Life

One of my favorite theoretical pieces is the first chapter of Judith Butler’s book, Undoing Gender. In this chapter, entitled “Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy”, Butler discusses the issue of a “griveable life” i.e. what kind of life should we mourn? I had time to think about her words a few days after the terrorist attack on Westgate mall, after the death toll kept rising, and the individuals became more faceless. I thought about her words after a Pakistani friend first told me of the terrorist attack, his words of comfort being, “Don’t worry, this happens all the time in my country and I’m still okay.” In truth, we are surrounded by so much terror and death, within and without our country, and as humans, we pick and choose the grievable lives, we mourn the ones that catch our attention, the emotive ones, the young ones, the ones that jar us to the reality that we are all headed to the grave. But who mourns for the un-grievable lives, in our case, the ones that are far beyond us, the kind that are “Oh I didn’t really know that person” or the “I’m not from that country, it’s all happening far away from me.” The indiscriminate shooting in America, the bombings in Nigeria and Pakistan, the chemical attack in Syria. How do we situate ourselves when we encounter “un-grievable” lives?

I don’t know the answer, and so I turn to Christ in moments like this. What Would Jesus Do in such a hurting world? Does he pick and choose between lives, the griveable and un-grievable ones? I think he grieves for us, all of us, he mourns for every life that is lost. He wept when Lazarus died. And if he promised to wipe away every tear from our eyes, then it can only mean that death was never in his plans, even though it would be my joy, one day, to be absent in the body so as to be present with my Lord.

Meanwhile, I pray that God would grant me the grace to see each life as he sees it, grievable or un-grievable, because if I am his hands and feet, then I also want to be a vessel of his sorrow.

That time

I didn't know what love is until he was gone
Until we stood holding hands whispering our prayers to the
God you loved
Until I saw you and crumpled to the ground in fear of
the future that my eyes could no longer see
Until I spooned with you through the night listening for
the nightmares that keep you awake
Longing for a morning
When you will wake up and sing your Methodist hymn
"It is well with my soul".
I ache for you
Because you loved him
And I love you.