It’s Monday morning, and I am struggling again this morning after a night of fitful sleep, which was accompanied by a developing cold. The weekend was good up front, but again, church was another source of pain as I saw in the bulletin the class I was teaching with her is reoffered this month- and of course, I am not helping teach it, which means a) I really am now on the outside with the Thursday night ministry, and b) that I am reminded again how unimportant I am (or really was) to her as she moves on in life without me.

I feel like every other week at church something happens which stirs up pain within me about losing her as a friend, and about being kicked out of her life. I know I have to move on, but I think the way I was rejected- with silence, without conversation and any effort for any reconciliation- continues to be what stings the most. She just put me down, gave up on me, and walked away. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand the why. I don’t understand how I could go from being someone I thought was of some value to her as a friend to being a nobody, someone she had to get away from, someone she needed to shut out. I feel like I move forward a little each week, getting a handle on grief, and then because there was no closure for me, I am right back there in the pain and sorrow again because something happens at church that reminds me that we are no longer friends.  Although I am told her separation was not about me, it was about me because she made this decision to push me away, and I am simply left wondering what I did wrong, what was so wrong about me.

It’s been nearly two months now that she has been silent to me.  I should see this for what it is.  I should see her silence over Christmas break and her silence about anything that made us friends in the past as a finality, as the thunderous stillness that follows an execution.  But my heart is still attached.  I poured a lot of time and prayer and thought and energy into my relationship with her, and to recognize that all of this is over and done is something I continue to not want to accept.  I admit it regularly to myself now, but emotionally, I still hold on to some irrational hope that something could be salvaged.

I need to let it all go.  Again.

It will continue to take some time.

“Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  I all things, acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.”

Lord, please keep jerking my eyes back to you, help me to accept what is, and help me to let go of the past.