My Social Media-less Life

As I get older and notice patterns in my life more often, I take the time to stop and address why the pattern is even there to begin with.

What started this pattern?
When did this pattern start?
Why is it still a part of my life?
Is it necessary?

In this case, the pattern is thinking of someone I haven’t heard from in over 11 years.

That sounds like a weird thing to have as a pattern because most people in my head simply come and go. This particular person was probably the person I was the absolute closest to having a real “courting” relationship with, so there are still a lot of random (and perhaps undealt-with) emotions surrounding this person.

You would think because he ended up being an absolute creep, walked out of my life without so much as a “see ya never”, and gave me nothing but a hard time emotionally afterward that I would have just forgotten about him by now.

But as we all learn over time, the heart and the mind simply don’t work like that. So for the last 11 years or so, I think about this person anywhere from one to two times a year.

What is he doing now? Is he still a creep? How do I pray for him? Is it weird that I still have feelings for him sometimes? Does he ever think about me? What would life have been like if we had ended up together?

I know “what if” questions are dangerous, so I rarely spend a long time on those ones, but I do wonder regardless… and I get some decent stories out of the “what ifs” of life overall.

And yes, I do still have feelings for him. It surprises even myself how strongly those feelings are, but they are there.

This time around however, I wonder if maybe I’m supposed to put these strong feelings to rest for good.

Based on a word I got from the Lord a few months ago, I think pulling up these parts of my past and dealing with them in a healthy way is par for the course, as opposed to just letting them exist when they’re here and then letting them be when they go back to sleep.

Today was the first time I was open enough with myself and the Lord to admit that if this man walked back into my life tomorrow and wanted another shot with me, I wouldn’t put any qualifiers on my answer and my answer would be “yes.”

Thankfully my friend Rachel putting up the immediate “what are you thinking” messages as we messaged back and forth while I was struggling through this earlier were enough for me to realize this is probably more unhealthy than I originally thought.

Although it’s hard, I know the right thing to do is to give this whole situation to the Lord. He has asked me (and asks me everyday) to give all my worries and cares to Him… but sometimes I’m afraid of what that looks like. I’m realizing now, as I type this, that I’m afraid something of me will be “taken away” because it’s been such a part of me for the last 11 years.

However, I also know that something like this is like a cavity. It starts off small, and then one day, you have to remove the whole tooth and that’s a lot more painful than just having the rot gutted and filled in with something else.

In this case, the “something else” would be freedom from being tied down to this man. This person that hasn’t been a part of my life longer than he was. This person didn’t want to give me the time of day, so why should I continue to give him literal days of my life?

No. I’m not going to let this man run my life anymore. I will still pray for him, but I’ll pray for him like I’ve prayed for the other relationships that I had to let go. He’s in God’s hands now, and that’s the best place for him.

The aforementioned “something else” to replace this “cavity removal” would also be more room for the Holy Spirit to work in my life and help prepare me for the next season, whatever that is. It’s time to move on in the Lord, and holding onto these strong feelings isn’t moving on.

I thank God for the things I learned from this man; things that helped me navigate how to be a respectable adult better. But I choose to let him go.

Because that’s honestly the best thing for both of us.