The Silly Little Thing Called Love

Chapter Five

Breaking Bad 

The Bible is full of bad breakups. For instance, after Job lost everything in his existence except his own life, his wife comes in and yells at him to curse God and die. David has an affair with Bathsheba, gets her pregnant and then decides he needs to breakup her marriage by having her husband murdered… That’s a crazy dude! Hosea wanted a woman named Gomer, yes you read that correctly, so bad that he went and bought her out of prostitution and ultimately married her. One day she wakes up and decides she’ll go back to the corner and finish the career she started and when Hosea wakes up she’s gone. You know it’s a bad breakup when the one walking out would rather be a prostitute than to be with you! And drum roll please…. The worst Bible Break Up Award goes to Samson and Delilah. Samson falls asleep in the lap of Delilah, only to wake up noticing she’s cut all of his hair off and sent in a gang of warriors to gouge his eyes out and kill him. The struggle is real sometimes. If you are ever feeling bad about your breakup just go read your Bible and I think it may make you feel a little better about your situation.  

I tried to make this chapter light to start with but the truth is breaking up is hard. Some of our darkest and hardest days are the immediate days follow a break up. Nothing is worse than the feeling of rejection and quite frankly being broken up with is absolutely a sheer feeling of rejection. If you’ve ever left a serious relationship before you know this feeling all too well. That feeling of having invested years of your life into something that in one moment no longer exist. The feeling of knowing you emotionally opened yourself completely to someone who no longer has an emotional connection to you. The feeling that someone who once was your closest friend but now seems like a stranger that knows all your secrets. It hurts. Let’s just be real, we never date someone with the hopes that it doesn’t work out; it is always our hope that when we start out in a relationship that this will be the one that is the last. Unfortunately it doesn’t always work out like that. 

Rejection often times can be God’s way of giving us the protection we need for the destiny He has planned for us. It is easy to look at rejection from someone else as a sign of something being wrong with us, but the truth is God knows who and what is best for us, and if He didn’t allow some relationships to be rejected we would settle for anyone or anything. One of the greatest qualities needed in every relationship is trust and that goes in your relationship with God as well. You’ve got to trust that God has a plan for your marriage life and if He allows rejection from someone else to find its way into your life, more than likely that relationship must not be a part of His marriage plans for you.

The real question I want to pose for those of you coming out of these heartbreaking relationships is how you move on to someone else after giving everything you had to another? You can’t. At least not right away, and that’s perfectly fine. Taking a break from relationships after a “break” up is not a bad idea, in fact it’s a brilliant idea. The worst yet most common strategy of recovering from a break up is by rebounding, as if this thing called love is just a game. In doing this you show a lack of respect towards yourself by neglecting your heart, mind and soul a time to heal from the emotional suffering. By going from one relationship to the next you find acceptance in others rather than within yourself. You need a time of refilling before giving out again. That is when it’s time to go to God and allow His Spirit to do exactly that. 

Does time really heal all wounds? I’m not one-hundred percent positive that it does, but I’m certain that God heals all wounds if you give Him the time to do so. It is important to know that your heartache, pain and discomfort produces character. 

By turning to God in our times of brokenness we experience not only development as a person but we also find the only love that will never leave us. Romans 5:3-5 gives us this promise, “3 …we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” By allowing God the opportunity to draw near to us in the midst of our pain, we will experience a love deeper than we can comprehend physically, it’s a love that our souls crave. This love is what produces the character spoken of in Romans. When we are broken God doesn’t see a mess, a creator never sees a disaster, He only sees the beauty that is in brokenness. The greatness of the God we serve is that even in our most broken state, the pieces of our fragmented life always fall into His hands. Once in His hands He can make all things new. 

As a child, I remember going with my mom on weekends for hours upon hours antique shopping. There are only two things that constantly went through my mind while I was shopping with her: 

1. What have I done so badly that I am getting punished by spending a whole day looking at ragged, broken furniture?

2. What does she see in this ugly mess? 

Now, I still haven’t found the answer to question number one but it wasn’t until I met God on a personal level that I found the answer to question number two. You see, distress on antiques gives character and we are much like that as humans in the hands of a creator God. Our lives can at times feel as though they are nothing but an ugly mess filled with distress. Absolutely we have all been broken and damaged by people whom we trusted with our hearts, but when our lives are in the hands of God He simply takes the distressed blemishes found deep within our soul and produces character from them. God will never waste a season of brokenness.

 One of my favorite portions of scripture is found in John 6:12, it simply says “Gather the fragmented pieces so that nothing is wasted.” The pain that you may have experienced in the past or possibly may be experiencing now is not in vain. Pain always has purpose! 

The first thing you’ve got to do to recover from a break up is give some payback, right? Wrong. The best payback you can send them would be forgiveness. Forgiveness will either cause them to be better or bitter, and that’s for them to choose. As for you, you’ve got to do your part as a Christian and forgive them for the hurt they have caused you. Before you were their partner in a dating relationship, you must remember they were a part of the family of God with you. They will forever be your brother or sister in Christ and we are commanded by God to love the family of believers, including them. It is in these circumstances that you’ve got to learn how to embrace the old saying, love them from a distance. It’s ok to leave them physically, but it’s not okay to abandon the spiritual love you once had for their eternal soul. Even when you can&rs