With God looking more and more like the villain every day, I knew I had no other choice. It was time to end this awful relationship that was causing me so much pain.
It was time to break up with God.
I don’t know how else to describe it. It honestly felt like a real break up. God had been a constant part of my life for as long as I could remember. Many of those memories were positive ones. But for all the pain and agony that relationship was causing me now, it was still incredibly sad for me to think that all God would ever be to me now would be a memory.
Just a distant memory of someone who used to be a big part of my life but could never be again. In a strange way my heart broke at the thought of it.
I still believed God was real but had no idea what to think beyond that anymore. I had no idea what He was truly like or what He thought or felt about me. Now that I was older and dealing with some tough life experiences, God seemed so opposite of everything I had been taught to believe about Him growing up.
I began wondering if I had been deceived the entire time. I thought maybe God was just a concept for little children, but as you get older He starts to lose His magic.
The God of my childhood was warm, loving, gentle and kind.
The God of my adulthood was cold, tricky, deceitful and mean.
During this time people would tell me all sorts of stories about how God had really come through for them in a tough situation. I guess they were trying to give me some sort of hope or proof He would do the same for me. All it did was prove to me something I was already starting to believe:
God wanted that kind of trusting, loving relationship with some people, but clearly not with me.
I wanted so very much to experience the loving God Christians were always going on and on about. I wanted to know Him like that. I wanted desperately to connect with Him that way. But the times when I took “steps of faith” to trust Him and get close to Him, it only ended up in crushing disappointment and agonizing pain instead. I just didn’t understand it.
Beneath the anger and disappointment that was still bubbling on the surface, I was now feeling deep, sharp pains of rejection.
Because I couldn’t bear it to be strung along anymore, I did the only thing I could think of. I needed to break up with God, this time for good. Cut all ties and never look back. Though I desperately wanted a deep, real connection with Him, the pain of feeling unwanted and rejected was just too much. I had to just walk away completely and deal with the fact that I would never have that sort of relationship with Him. It just wasn’t in the cards for me.
I wanted it. He didn’t.
I remember the day vividly when I sobbed and shook and told God I was done. I wasn’t even angry at this point. It was just a deep, deep sense of heartbreak and loss.
Every painful breakup needs a breakup song and mine was one called “Over When It’s Over” by country music artist Eric Church.
Part of the lyrics go like this:
It’s over when it’s over. Ain’t it baby, ain’t it.
Rips ya like a dagger. Can’t it baby, can’t it.
Wish we could do it over. Damn it baby, damn it.
We had it in the air. We just couldn’t land it.
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