I wanted to catch you guys all up to speed on what is happening in my love life, brown chicken brown cow! Before the race I was dating a guy and had been for the past 2 years or so. We were living together in Vegas and I actually almost wasn’t accepted onto the race because of it (the girl who interviewed me had to beg her boss to let me on, because she knew the Lord had big plans for me). We decided to break up before the race began, but it has been a lingering relationship that hadn’t quite ended. He had gotten to the point where he was willing to wait for me until the trip was over in a year and I was to the point of asking him to. In Rwanda, just last month, I was being brutally honest with my teammates and told them that I couldn’t imagine my life without Dan and that I don’t think I will ever stop loving him. It was kind of tough admitting that was where I was at, because I felt like I had come so far, but I knew I had to be brutally honest with the girls and shed light into what was going on, in order to be held accountable.
So anyways, when we got to the Philippines I had Skyped with Dan a few times, but I could tell that the Lord was telling me that I wasn’t giving Him time or space to work in my heart because I kept communicating with him all the time. I wasn’t accepting the break up, because I was trying to detach myself from him on my own and not handing it over to God to split my heart away. I had a few instances where I was talking to Dan, when I knew I shouldn’t be and Kevin and Kelly, each time, knew something was up and came over to confront me about it. It was actually kind of awesome, the Lord knew I wasn’t succeeding at doing it myself, so he placed two guardians in my life to help me along the way.
I finally told Dan that I needed to not speak to him until, at least, after this month and he agreed and foresaw this coming. It actually was a lot easier than I had thought it to be, thankfully! I started building into relationships here, instead of using Dan as my crutch and escape. I was going to him to work things out and verbally process, but by doing that I was not doing it with the people here, the people that I need to build into here.
A few weeks after that decision, I received an email from Dan. He knew that this was the end, as much as I did. He hadn’t wanted to break it off, with hopes that we would work things out, but we both knew that wasn’t going to be the case. He took the mature step and emailed me saying it was enough, we don’t need this vow of silence while he is sitting at home waiting for me. We needed to face the reality and say that we aren’t in love with each other anymore and we might not be able to be friends for a while, but that it is going to be okay and this is the right thing to do.
I had such a strange peace about this whole deal and such an unearthly joy about it. Just a month ago I couldn’t imagine my life without Dan and now I am perfectly content to say that, not only am I not in love with him anymore, but I’m okay with us not being friends for a while and I can’t wait until we can pick up our friendship later down the road. We ended the conversation very honorably, we told each other how much we appreciated the relationship, how much we have learned and grown from it, how great the other person is and how excited we are to see where our life takes us in the upcoming years. I prayed over him and we ended up, simple as that.
It is still hard, don’t get me wrong. There are times when I really struggle with missing him and thoughts about our relationship that were so good and regrets about certain things. All in all though, the Lord has really blessed me with a peace about the whole thing and I am so grateful for it.
