The main question that's been lingering in my mind lately is ...
"If someone loves you the way they perceive love to be correct, are they truly loving you?"
Being a Christian, I definitely have a different perception of love compared to the rest of world. In fact, 1 Corinthians sums it up pretty well: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."
There have definitely been times where I have seen love like this come from you, but there have also been many other times where I believe you just tried loving me with what you thought love was. And I honestly don't know what to think of that. Should I respond with "Hey, at least you tried" or "Gotta step up your game, dude"?
But if I could just politely remind you, I doubt you have ever received a love so eternally blissful as I have.
How could ever give what you have never allowed yourself to receive?
There is no truth in your love,
there is no selflessness in your love,
there is no patience in your love.
there is no respect in your love.
You can't even love me as a friend - you can't even love a friend! How could you ever think you would be able to truly love with a real, raw kind of love?
You can't even love yourself! You are always striving to please people. Not to mention you also don't know how to love yourself in terms of your own health.
If you can't even learn to love yourself, to put your own best (not selfish) interests at heart, how the hell are you supposed to love others?
Yet I want to apologize. Even though I've received such a love from elsewhere, I did not extend that love to you for my own selfish reasons. Granted, I'm sure that I did express this love to you at times. I am confident in saying that I was always gentle, respectful, and kind. Overall, though, I was still pretty selfish. If I had loved the both of us, I would have never let the relationship escalated to where it did.
If I had loved you, I would have stood up and stopped the relationship that night I first saw you smoke that cigarette.
If I had loved you, I would have wanted to genuinely know and accept you as a person.
If I had loved you, I definitely would have talk to you more about growing your faith and this wonderful God we have - but I kept it all to myself... and even drew further away from Him as I was with you.
I'm sorry I was ashamed of being with you.
I'm sorry I was not proud to be with you.
I'm sorry I had tried to hide you from the world.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. If only I could tell you these things - not necessarily to make things better - but to show you that I recognized that our relationship was not healthy but that I do earnestly seek to understand what true love is. Not the feeling of love - but raw, real, sacrificial and covenantal love.
It's just quite ironic that from being able to come out of the relationship, I have learned how to genuinely love you as a person. In other words, at least at this point in our lives, I can only love you as a person than as a boyfriend. Originally, this thought had me thinking that perhaps I would talk to you again in the future but even just having this thought showed that I was not letting go.
So I went up to this hill and cried out to God to help me let go of you - I didn't keep any pictures of you or us in my phone, but they're still all over instagram, twitter, etc... so I took the time to delete all of those as I would still catch myself staring at them time to time. Your contact information is not in my phone but I finally deleted it off iCloud - the last remnants of it. To fully let go of you, I really needed to let go of any scraps I had and not allow myself to think that I would be talking to you in the future in any way. I had actually planned to try and talk to you come Christmas time, but I've decided to let go of such plans. I've been telling myself that the only way I'd talk to you again is if we ever run into each other in person. Then, and only then, will I ever let myself talk to you again.
Granted, there's a high possibility I still might see you at community college and even the nearby state school. And honestly speaking, a small part of me is hoping that will happen - but I honestly don't know about your life and you and I might even be going separate academic paths, which is fine. But that hope is comparable to the hope of... seeing a familiar face when I visit foreign places. So don't worry, my friends, it's not some foolish hope I've just happened to garner.
Lately I've also been coming to realization that letting go is a process - as are most things in life. Genuinely realizing this has gotten me to feeling better about myself. It's going to take some time, whether I like it or not. And while the bitterness and anger is gone and while I can say I can love you as a person now, there is still immense sadness and heaviness in my heart and I still can't stop myself from having some sob sessions from time to time.
My final step of letting go of you is to cease routinely praying for you. If I catch myself thinking about you, though, I'll definitely pray to God rather than think on my own about it. But I won't try to intentionally pray for you anymore, because I've realized that is also a form of me refusing to let go and refusing to trust God. But I do trust God. Just look at all he's said and done in the Bible - and I am continuously seeing his faithfulness in our current generation, so why am I doubting God's trustworthiness? I don't want to be that kind of Christian.
I'm not saying that I've fully, 100% entrusted my thoughts and feelings of you to God, but I'm definitely getting there as each day passes by and I am very intentional about passing all worries of you to God.
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