Go

Nudge.
A literal poke or just a dream?
Nudge.
Ok, ok…it’s the alarm clock.
Snooze.
Nudge. Something says to get up. I grudgingly turn off the alarm clock and slip out of bed. My dreams have not been so good as of late. Heartbreak can create dreams that cause sleepless nights.

If you know me, you know that life has taken a dramatic turn. The one I consider being the one true one; the love of my life; my soul mate, lover and future partner has left me. I’m not going into detail, but mistakes were made and it is over. When your heart is hurting, life’s everyday nuisances become dramatic interludes into despair. When you can’t think of anything else but how much you miss her; how much you long for those 3-word texts; imagining that you smell her essence in the next room, every day lingers and every night there is longing.

Hope? Nope. I don’t have that. The only thing I have is a pain that rises and ebbs in a cyclic pattern.

I’m dealing with it. That I can do. I don’t know how long it will take to get over her. I compare it to the pain of losing my first love. That one took years for the hurt to subside totally. Really, it was gone before then, but would surface every now and again in memory.

Several Stuart Smalley moments of standing in front of a mirror put a thought into my mind and this past week, I decided that perhaps a visit to my church of choice would do some good. That is, if I could wake up in time to make it. If, when I did get up I felt like it. If the weather permitted it. If something told me to go…

“Wake up. Get ready. Get in your car and go.”
Not audible words, but words in my head. Did I say them? Were they even said at all?
But I need to make the coffee…
Oh, I prepared it last night.
But I don’t have anything to wear…
“They don’t care.”
But I haven’t been in so long…
“They don’t care.”
“Go.”

I drive.
I arrive.

I’m meeted and greeted and pointed to snacks, juice and coffee. I’m told that the regular preacher won’t be preaching today, but that there is a special guest speaker. Roger Hernandez is his name; speaking to your soul is his game. One day only, all the way from a city nowhere near you!

I chose this church because years ago, when I was at what I felt was my lowest, when I felt that love had slapped me in the face and turned its back on me; when I thought that I could never love again…something told me to go. I could have chosen anywhere, but I chose there. Having friends who attended there helped out a lot in my choice too.

I ran into one of them almost immediately. I’m not a person who can hide my feelings with ease. You ask me how I’m doing and if I’m in a bad mood, you can tell I’m lying when I tell you I’m just fine. I opened my heart out to him. Even though he had no profound words of wisdom or insightful quotes, it felt good to let it out. He had to run the video for the sermon, so he didn’t have much time, but pointed me to a friend of his whom I could sit with so I wouldn’t feel alone.

One tear jerking video about Mother’s Day and several songs later, he speaks and I can’t believe what I’m hearing. He is speaking of how David was given much and how he LOSES it all.

He loses his wife.
He loses his job.
He loses his house.
He loses his spiritual adviser.
He loses his best friend.
He loses his dignity.

And through it all, he had already been promised that he will become the next king of Israel. How can this come to fruition when he has lost so much? He ends up in a cave, the leader of a rag-tag group of losers like himself. He is King of the Losers. After much prayer and soul searching, he comes to understand that his circumstances do not control his outcome. He was already promised what he was promised. He comes to understand that even though he doesn’t have his wife, his job, his house, his spiritual adviser, his best friend nor his dignity, he does have God. And God is enough.

Tears stream down my face. I’m a grown man surrounded by people I don’t know listening to a man that I had never even heard of and I feel he is talking directly to me. He tells me that I was not brought to this place to be left here. In the midst of the storm and pain of my life, there is a plan.

You know, I prayed going into this relationship that it was right. I felt that it was. For nearly two years it was right. It was part of the plan. I don’t blame her for this…I don’t blame myself for this. Perhaps I blame us. What could have been done or what in the world went wrong or the who’s, the how’s, the when’s where’s or why’s are unsure to me. I do love her, (and I do mean I love her with all of my heart) and I wish only the best for her. I prayed after she left, begging God to bring back my love. I don’t want to be lonely. I don’t want to go through life, one failed relationship after another. I even got to the point of questioning myself; questioning my own worth. What is wrong with me that this keeps happening to me? Why can’t I keep someone to love?

It took several reassurances from multiple sources, telling me that there is nothing wrong with me and a stranger on a stage to remind me that I am not the one in charge. I can make all the right (wrong) decisions on my own, but they will never be the right ones as long as I try to make them on my own.

The service was over. I walked up to this speaker, this man that I never heard of nor seen before in my life and I tell him that I had no idea why I came to this place today, but that the man that he was talking about was not David; it was not Old Testament times…it was me and it was 2013 and that surely he was the reason that I was told to “Go!” He shakes my hand and tells me to listen and to remember there is a promise, a purpose, and a plan.

I have no idea of what that plan is. Only time will tell.