Walk Away

She sat there with tears falling down her cheeks, trying to hide them from us.
She hid behind all the right excuses, all the right phrases, and had an answer for everything.
This fragile, brokenhearted girl wanted to be strong.
She wanted to be accepted, loved, and more than anything she wanted to let her guard down.

She found herself the punchline of every joke, the one who took the blame, and the one who finished last. Her best efforts were never good enough for the others, and though she gave them everything she had, they continued to use her and then throw her away when something better came along. She was abandoned time and time again, forced to walk alone through her pain, but desperate to connect to her friends...the same friends who took what they needed and walked away.

She was broken. She was hurting. She was asking me to give her permission to live like this.

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I've learned a lot about relationships in the years since leaving high school. Before I got to college, I thought I had the friendship thing figured out. I knew I had no clue how to do the boyfriend-girlfriend thing, but being friends? Um, duh, I went to pre-school! Twice! (I totally got kicked out the first time. I hid in the bathroom every day and my sister had to come get me out. They made me leave and wait a year. Coincidentally, in 7th grade, I also had a problem with hiding in the bathroom....but that's a different story!)

My experiences with friendships and relationships have taught me that sometimes you have to walk away. You have to choose to guard your own heart and move on with your life without the other person. And the decision to walk away is painful. The kind of pain that wakes you up at night, has you crying under your covers (or in the shower, in your car, under your desk, in the library, in chapel, in the cafeteria, in class....okay, you get the picture. I'm a major weeper.) and stops you from being happy. It cuts into your soul and your entire being is disrupted.

I have gone through this a few times in my life. Four times in particular. Four times that I've had to deliberately and consciously remove someone from my life. I've had friendships fade and relationships drift apart, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about times where these four people were people I considered best friends. In fact, even as I think about them, collectively and individually, remnants of the pain felt is washing over me. Waves of sadness, moments of anger, bitterness tainting the memories of joy, and an overwhelming feeling of regret that the situations didn't end up differently. Maybe the regret is only because one of those friendships I am walking away from is a bit more current than the others, but I fought so hard for those four relationships and they are gone.

I used to pray for those relationships, those fractured friendships.
Psalm 20:4 May He give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed.
Psalm 37:4 Take delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalm 145:19 He fulfills the desires of those who fear Him; He hears their cry and saves them.
Obviously, I had a thing for self-righteous googling of the Psalms, taking things out of context, and using Scripture to my own advantage. Note to all readers: AVOID AVOID AVOID!

As my relationships crumbled and failed, I felt God abandoning me too. I felt alone, rejected, and unworthy. How foolish I was, how blind, how wrong!

The path I had planned for my life would have placed me with any one of those four people next to me as my best friend or my lover or my true love or my soul mate...whatever my mind cooked up at the moment. But God knew the bigger picture. He knew the life I would have planned for myself would have trapped me, it would have caged my potential, and would have led me away from the people I am with now. Could things have turned out great? Sure, probably...I'm a hoot and a half! But I am convinced that THIS is the place God wants me. I answered the call to walk away. And now I am giving it.

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I look at her and tell her what she does not want to hear.
You have to walk away.
I can't.
If I can do it, so can you.

I see a moment of resolve in her eyes for the first time. She is going to be alright. It is a hard road to take, but she will not walk it alone ever again.