By Marisa Donnelly, a poet and author of the book, Somewhere on a Highway.
Dear God,
I come to you with my heart in my hands.
There are pieces of it that are missing, given to boys who couldn’t love me the way I needed to be loved. There are arteries with tiny holes, for all the ways I’ve convinced myself I wasn’t enough. There are veins that pump too wildly because sometimes there’s just too much emotion happening in there. There are parts that are bruised; I haven’t been so good with guarding what you’ve given me.
But my heart’s still intact; though days like today it sure doesn’t feel like it.
Today I come to you with this heart: this tired heart, this big heart, this silly heart that keeps giving itself away. I come to you with loss, with breakage, with fear for the future and how I’m ever going to let love back in. I come to you still wrestling with my feelings for a man who I’m no longer with, still trying to figure out if I can ever forgive him, ever let go of him, ever unlove him, or if I should.
I come to you with all of me, hoping that somehow you’ll repair the damage, heal his and my soul again.
God, you’ve given me the gift of love. You’ve blessed me, blessed all of us humans with hearts to let others in, with the ability to connect in ways we can’t even explain or comprehend sometimes. It’s so wonderful. But sometimes I don’t understand it.
Why do you let us fall for people who maybe aren’t right for us? Why do you allow us to have such powerful emotions, such profound relationships if they’re eventually going to fail? Why do you let us get cheated on, mistreated, broken, and left?
What’s the lesson we’re supposed to be learning—To not settle until we’ve found the real thing? To look for love like your love? To be strong in loss?—and why must we learn it in such a painful way?
You brought this wonderful man into my life. You let me fall for him, let my heart become intertwined with his, let our lives grow together and shift and change. You allowed me to have feelings, deep feelings that sometimes I question looking back.
If he wasn’t right for me, God, then why did you let me love him?
I guess that’s one of the things I’ll always wonder. Maybe you brought him into my life to teach me how to let others in. Maybe he was supposed to be a blessing for a time, but also a lesson. Maybe he was pulling me away from you, so you let us fall apart.
Maybe we were meant to be temporary, not permanent because we belong to other people. Maybe our breakup will make me stronger in time.
But God, it’s so hard to know your purpose sometimes. It’s so hard to make sense of the ache in my chest. It’s so hard to look at photos of him and remember what we had— was it all for nothing?
I come to you today with my heart in fragments. I come to you today with bitterness and anger, with doubt and frustration, with loneliness and fear. I come to you, wondering why. I come to you questioning whether or not I made a mistake— Is it possible that I should still be with him? It is possible to forgive him and let him go?
God, my heart feels tired. Tired of being stepped on. Tired of being left. Tired of being taken advantage of. Tired of being given to the wrong person, only to end up empty in the end.
I need you to renew strength in me. And I need you to help me forgive him.
Please give me the strength to let go—of the past, of the pain, of him. Help me to see that the way he treated me doesn’t define me, that my broken heart is not who I am, that I will find love again. Show me that you are here for me, and that if I trust you with my heart, you will guide me to the right person and onto the right path, no matter how far I have strayed.
Father, please be with this boy I loved. Show him how powerful you are, how big your heart is. Show him the love you want for him—a love that is pure, passionate, and honorable to both him, and you.
Show him forgiveness and a change of heart. Show him a new path to walk on. Show him acceptance and grace and mercy. Show him that he is a good person, and that he should never let a relationship pull him away from you. Show him that I have forgiven him, and please help that to be true.
Because I do think I’ve forgiven him, when I close my eyes and open my heart. But I need your strength to help me continue in that forgiveness, even when I remember the bad times between us, even when I feel lonely, even when I’m reminded of how we fell apart.
God, give me the strength to let go and pursue love again. Give me the compassion to move on from what’s been lost and follow in your ways. And please, bless this man I loved and watch over him, too. We may have gone our separate ways, but I still thank you for putting him in my life.
Maybe I won’t know the reason now, but he showed me love for a period of time, and even though my heart still aches, I know in time I will understand it was all a part of your plan.
Forever yours,
Amen.
