I am sitting at my desk, in a cubicle where the only light shining through is coming from the tiny slots between blinds.
I tried to make it through this morning only having a really healthy green drink and no coffee but failed tremendously.
I just let out a really good cry, the one that flows and you can’t stop it and so I sat in the bathroom with the lights off and the fan on and let them fall.
I don’t know who this is for, maybe it was just for the sake of me releasing some things but here we go…
We live in a generation where love and relationships and all of those wonderful words have become dense, “complicated”, straight up confusing and sometimes not even worth it.
We are surrounded by “hooking up”, dating is now something our parents did in the good ol days, calling things for what it is is too scary and so we hide from it and we give lots of pieces of ourselves away without the commitment to balance out the giving.
And for the young Christians living in this generation sometimes I feel like we’re all thinking,
“Well this looks like a titanic about to crash into an iceberg of destruction, so let me just get married now and jump ship while I can!” Or somehow down the line we think that dating and getting to know people is this new found sin because some magical genie is just supposed to bring us “our one”.
To put it honestly,
we’re somewhat of a mess.
We are a hurting generation who’s forgotten how to love and so we just keep hurting others and hurting ourselves.
Lately, I’ve read a lot of articles about the goodness of being single and they have been wonderful inspirations while I tread blindly through this half joy, half awkward, half whirlwind of a season I’m in. But there’s another reality to singleness that is also very present; it hurts. Simple as that, our hearts are in vulnerable places and it is terrifyingly inevitable that we will at some point and time get.hurt. And it sucks, and it’s not fair and we’ll get through this season but here’s the thing we don’t really get told… while you’re in it it’s okay to release a few tears at the smallest of things. If we pretend we’re not hurting and just meander through our days plastering smiles on our faces and hiding this throbbing feeling in our chests it will be even uglier when we finally decide to acknowledge it.
It’s okay (temporarily) to pretend your mind and heart are battling it out while both spinning together on a hamster wheel, going over things over and over again until you are exhausted.
It’s okay to go to sleep early just so you stop being suffocated by your own thoughts.
It’s okay to verbal process it to others…or to yourself but it may never make sense, no matter how many times you hear the stories and that’s okay.
It’s okay. Let it happen, let it all out, lay on your floor and stare at nothing for five minutes, let the uneasiness of that silence unravel you.
But here’s the thing… you can’t stay there.
You can’t stay in that woe is me, woe is this, woe is all the things!
I know, that there are some of us, a lot of us really really trying to go about this whole game of love in the right way, without feeling like we’re compromising our morals, or who we are.
There are some of us who just trust with the truest parts of who we are and sometimes that puts in situations we didn’t warn our hearts about before.
We hold tight to the secret of touch and the idea that a connection to someone that surpasses the physical is so very possible.
There are some of us who realize the sacred wonder that our generation has tried to shade with fleeting desires and the idea that feelings are not necessary ingredients to this recipe of living and loving well.
And to all of that I say, yes some days are good and you remember that there is beauty and grace in the hurt.
And other days, it just hurts.
Remember, this too shall pass.
This is not in vain!
Your little heart will heal and sow the missing pieces back together so that you have something new and whole to give someone who will kiss your bandaged heart so tenderly.
We are emotional human beings, which means we sometimes have a hard time navigating and remembering that there is an art in loving one another well. We’re going to mess up, we’re going to get hurt, we’ll cry and let the hurt leak out of us until healing steps in.
And I would dare to say that even in the hurting, you can find the sweetness in what was even if it may be small.
It’s never quite fair this game of hurt and feel but when you’re ready…stuff it all in a bottle close it real tight and let it crash against the waves of this too shall pass.
So spend your few days or months, or years (God-forbid) walking gradually through whatever a healing process looks like for you. Make a point to get yourself to a place where you are strengthened and are able to shake off this hurt from your shoulders, refuse to let it weigh you down. And at the end of it all, look at how much it shaped and changed you in the best of ways.
This is how you can stay up to date with upcoming workshops, events and other audience opportunities, receive new and exciting news that only email subscribers and receive information on ways to support Arielle more consistently!