The Story of Us | The Breakup Months

The past month, I have been sharing The Story of Us| How Josh and I Started Dating. The first two installments were How We Met and How We Started Dating. You’ll want to go back and check those out first if you haven’t read them before you read today’s, because spoiler alert… Josh and I broke up just three months after we started dating!

Three months into our relationship, I fell in love with my boyfriend. I never thought that was possible, but here I was in love with him! Of course, I didn’t tell him this, because I didn’t want to scare him away… well that didn’t matter, because a few days after my I-love-him-revelation, he breaks up with me. I still remember that night so vividly. It was a Monday in September. He came over to talk, and I was really nervous, because things had been a little off the week before. Basically, he told me that he still liked me and cared for me, but that I was just a little too much for him to handle. See, I liked to spend my time with my boyfriend, and Josh wasn’t used to having a girlfriend, classes, friends, a job, and balancing it all. When I wanted to see him daily, even if it was just for a meal, Josh felt a little overwhelmed by my need to see him. He said I was overbearing. I said I was just being a normal girlfriend. I think it was something in between.

I struggled so much with the break-up. I used to make fun of those girls who broke up with their boyfriends and acted like I did. I couldn’t eat. I had trouble sleeping. I cried constantly. I struggled big time. I have looked back at my journals from that time in my life and see the sorrow in my heart. I tried to move on and not be so sad all of the time, but I just couldn’t get out of my funk. I had dated two guys before Josh and had never struggled with a break-up like this.

Mountain Day and a week after we had broken up. Putting on a brave face for the picture, but I remember going back to my dorm room and crying at how much I wanted to be with him.

One night about a month or so after the break-up, I was praying earnestly to the Lord and just begging him to take away my feelings for Josh. I was tired of crying and hurting. I was so over it all. So there I was, asking the Lord, begging him to take away my feelings for him. I opened up my Bible just to spend some time with the Lord and take my mind off of Joshua. I just opened my Bible to a random page. I opened it up to Ephesians 5. In this book and specific chapter, Paul writes about husband and wives and their relationships together.

My heart skipped a beat and I almost began crying. I couldn’t believe it. THIS is where the Lord led me to? Like, come on Lord! Seriously? I am trying to move on from Josh and want to spend some time with You and You lead me to THIS chapter of the Bible? Is this some kind of mean trick? And in that moment, I heard the Lord speak to me for the first time in my life. In my spirit and soul, I heard the Lord speak to me. Be still my child, for this is the man I have for you. And that was it. But that was all I needed. I knew exactly what He meant and that was the Lord speaking to me. And then I knew this was why He led me to Ephesians 5. I was overwhelmed with the amazingness of the Lord and His faithfulness to me. This was no coincidence that in all of the Bible, I turned to these words.

I was elated. I would be with Josh again one day! I would MARRY him one day; but when I shared this with people like my roommate, who was also friends with Josh, I would get very different reactions.
You need to move on.
He doesn’t want to be with you.
He’s moving on.
You’re not going to get back together with him.
These words weren’t meant to hurt or discourage me, but really came out of love from my friends who knew both Josh and me and knew how he felt at the time. My roommate wanted me to move on and not be hurt anymore than I already was. I probably would have said the same things to a friend of mine if I had heard it from her ex-boyfriend.

At this point, we were almost broken up as much as we were together and Josh really was moving on. I could tell he still liked me, but he still had no desire to be with me. Had I heard the Lord wrong? No… I just didn’t know when we would be getting back together. The Lord never told me it would be tomorrow or a month from now; and being the girl that I was, I wanted to make it happen in MY time, not the Lord’s. And because of this, I tried to hang out with Josh as often as I could still. It didn’t help my heart and didn’t help the situation. It got to a point where in December, right before the holiday break, Josh got so mad at me for “interfering” with another girl he was a little interested in. I was so hurt and really questioned whether or not we would really get back together.  I started to really wonder if I had heard the Lord correctly. Josh told me that he didn’t want us to talk at all over the Christmas break. If you remember college, that’s almost a whole month that we were not talking.

I went home without saying goodbye to him for the semester and didn’t talk to him at all over majority of the break. I remember praying one night a couple of days into the break and REALLY, finally giving it to the Lord, really trusting His promise to me, and telling Him that I would stop trying to take it into my hands and trust in His timing. In that moment, I felt this relief in my soul. It was like this huge burden was lifted. I still loved Josh and still wanted to get back together with him, but I truly was going to trust in the Lord’s timing.

And that’s what I did. We didn’t see each other or talk that break until he called me on my birthday, December 26th, to wish me happy birthday. I had a New Years party at my house with a lot of our college friends, so Josh came to that, and we saw each other at Passion 2005 in Nashville, but leading up to that, I had three full weeks of no talking to Joshua or hearing from him. It was hard, but good for me. It’s what I needed to really give our relationship to the Lord.

New Years Party at my house. My heart was content with the Lord, but I still wanted to be with him.

Those five months broken up with Josh were the hardest, but I am so thankful for them today. I look back and see how much I learned during that time and how close I grew in the Lord during that time. I don’t know/think we would be together today if we hadn’t broken up. Five months apart isn’t all that much in the scheme of things and the almost 11 years we have now been together; but at the time, it felt like it was forever! But through it all, I loved seeing how faithful the Lord was to me during that time. The Lord has only spoken to me like that one more time in my life, and I look back very thankful that this was one of the two times He has done this. He didn’t have to reveal to me that I would be with Josh again one day, but He chose to speak to my soul and give me a glimpse of what was to come one day. Oh am I ever thankful for that promise fulfilled!

Come back next time for my next installment: The Story of Us | Getting Back Together. You’ll find out how and when we got back together.