"The sweet ain't always as sweet without the sour..."

Have you ever lost a loved one? Or better yet, have you ever lost a loved one that is still living? Deep question I know. I am talking about breaking up a relationship with someone you love. It leaves you spiritually diseased, and the symptoms are rapid emotional discharges such as tears. And you cry so hard you become fatigued with life and you just want it to be over. It even manufactures an intangible wound not seen by the eye, but felt through a pain. It’s a pain that penetrates even the deepest abysses of your heart, a place a sword can never reach. Its leaves you questioning your own actions…”what did I do wrong?” or “Am I really that bad of a person..”. Makes you think back to the good times and smile, but that smile is quickly erased once again by tears. It is as if this person is dead and gone, when really, it’s the part of your heart you gave them that has died.

A friend of mine recently broke up with her boyfriend and it has caused her to no longer want to commit. She no longer believes in love and has given up. In the beginning she asked herself questions like… “WHY AM STILL IN LOVE WITH THIS GUY AND HE DOESNT EVEN CARE... IS THIS NORMAL... SHOULD I STILL FEEL THIS WAY.... SHOULD I STILL WANNA BE WITH HIM... WHY!!!!” I left it in all caps because it displays her passion behind the questions being asked. We have all been sitting in her shoes wondering the same thing.

In life we experience things that leave us fragmented, tortured even. Tortured by the simple interactions with everyday things. These things trigger memories of the forgotten and cause immediate eruptions of pain or sadness. And if you are not strong enough to control it, these emotions will rip through your already weakened facial barrier, causing you to fall to your knees crying. Some people sub come to these feelings so mercifully, they chose to die from them. My friend is one of them. She has chosen seclusion, rather than inclusion. (read that again because I don’t think you got what it meant) She may be walking around physically, but her life doesn’t mean the same thing as before. Her goals have been re-routed, her heart has become a caged bird. A bird that is meant to fly, but her environment has left her a prison in her own mind.

This cage doesn’t have a lock though. What keeps the bird trapped is not the cage itself, but the fear of going back out into the world. It’s like Stockholm Syndrome for the heart, where the captive falls in love with it’s captor. In this case, the captor is pain. It seems safer or more comfortable to stay drenched in pain, than to go out and find pleasure again. What is the remedy for this? Prayer. Only God can bring you out. He can also put people in your life for you to fall back on and pray with. People to help bring joy back to your life, and have you standing on your feet again.

God will put you through things so that you can live to tell someone else about it. He will also make you appreciate certain things in life you were nonchalant or blind to before. He will renew in you a different person, a new character of the same graphic novel. A character that is thankful for all that he still has, and the things to come. And you will truly understand what Tom Cruises bestfriend in the movie Vanilla Sky meant when he said, “The sweet ain’t always as sweet, without the sour…”