Since I was meeting up with friends for lunch in Costa Mesa, I thought it would be lovely to spend some time alone on the beach. BUT... being the multi-tasker that I am... I decided that since I was in the area, I thought I'd try to call/arrange to possibly meet up with 3 other friends... just in case they were available to hang out. Sadly and thankfully, they all had plans or never got back to me. Looked like my day would be free and clear.
Catching up with friends you haven't seen in a long time is kind of a good way to sum up what's been going on with you over the years. Through recounting the major events of my life since college... I think it just somehow hit me that... boys ruin my life. LOL.
Maybe we had lots of finals in the quarter system, but my first two boyfriends somehow broke up with me right before finals... the first one actually broke up with me the day before my very first final Fall quarter of my freshman year. I also think I lost 20 pounds in less than a month because I couldn't eat; I was so depressed. Cruelty, thy name is untimely breakup.
Due to emotional turmoil and frequenting a far away city far too frequently my sophomore year, I lost my blessed regent's scholarship by 0.01 of a grade point, costing my parents thousands of dollars that they shouldn't have had to pay. Even more thousands when Schwarzenegger started office and UC fees started to hike. Every single tuition statement I received after my sophomore year was like pouring burning hot coals on my head for the mistakes I made that year. I recently caught up with my high school English teacher who, for over 10 years, told me that he's been recounting MY story of how financial aid comes in mysterious ways... and I was sad to disappoint him that my financial aid story had a lackluster ending. He then proceeded to comment on how expensive my failed relationships were. So sad. So true.
More than costing me grades and financial aid... those failed relationships caused me heartache. Although no one man has caused me more heartache than Anderson. You know I'm referring mostly to his death, but I was poking around some of my old files and I found some very angry letters that I wrote him early on in our relationship. Things weren't always peachy keen for us. Our first two years of dating were chock full of drama, fights, tears, nasty words spoken in anger (mostly by me...) and general unpleasantness... I don't even know why he stayed with me, honestly. We did international long distance and I still managed to be able to torment him from thousands of miles away. We only saw each other 3 months out of the year the first 3 years we dated and I remember it being excruciatingly painful. The first Christmas he spent in Brazil, I locked myself in my room and listened to audio Harry Potter while lying in bed... all day long. I think I did that for like 2-3 weeks. I probably listened to the first 4 Harry Potters that first winter he was abroad. Depression. Boys ruin my life.
I told my friend today that she could make sure that "death by boys" somehow ends up on my tombstone because knowing me, it would somehow end up being true. My lovely friend cannot comprehend how I've let boys and relationships ruin my life... how deeply I've struggled with boys over my conscious lifetime. Frankly, I wish it weren't so, but I've come to realize that I think for me... this is the way it had to be.
I do see how God has used the pain I allowed myself to be afflicted by through my endless pursuit of romantic affection to teach me the most powerful lessons of my life. I very consciously remember asking God to draw me closer to Him during my relationships... and very soon afterwards, going through a breakup... twice. When you hear people say, "be careful what you ask for"... at the time, I probably wished I could have gone back in time and taken back my request... but now that I have the wisdom of hindsight, I think I wished that I would have asked it sooner. Much, much sooner.
After each breakup, I had my closest encounters with God. As God shattered each and every one of my fragile hopes and dreams that I'd placed in such unworthy places... a little part of me died... and God in me increased. Culminating with Anderson... who embodied all my love, all my joy... all my future, my family, my life... when those hopes and dreams were shattered... I think that a huge part, if not the majority of me died with him... but it was a good thing. Death by boys = life in Christ.
The trials of life are sent to make us, not to break us. Financial troubles may destroy a person's business but build up his character. And a direct blow to the outer person may be the greatest blessing possible to the inner person. So if God places or allows anything difficult in our lives, we can be sure that the real danger or trouble will be what we will lose if we run or rebel against it. Malthie D. Babcock.So my real troubles would have been had I chosen to remain in depression by focusing on what I didn't have... what I felt I deserved... what I thought I needed... or who I thought I needed. The depth of my pain, each and every time, was so severe and oppressive that I was left powerless against it. In my brokenness and pain, God's gentle hands were there to pick me up and cradle me against His chest and then work with me, in me, and through me to put me back together again... but not as the same person I was prior to the breakup... but a new creation, molded and shaped by the loving hands of an omniscient and omnipotent master artist.
It has often been said, and truthfully so, that Christianity is the only religion that can deal with a person's past... He is trustworthy to do it unreservedly. He does so not because of what we are but because of who He is. God forgives and heals and restores, for He is "the God of all grace" (1 Peter 5:10). May we praise Him and trust Him. - from Streams in the Desert, from Sunday School TimesOK. I'm tired. Beyond tired. Exhausted. Gonna stop typing now. Night all.
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