Freewill and relationships

I was sitting and talking with someone who is having a rough go of it right now. Over the last few months, they’ve seen a love lost, and that love finds someone else. Now there are a wide range of emotions to doubt, anger, embarrassment, and a lack of understanding.

I spent some time telling them that there is no need to be embarrassed. The other feelings are natural and expected. We’re human. We have feelings and emotions.

But the questions like “Why would God do this to me?

I was trying to be good.”

Or “Why does she get rewarded for doing something like this?”

And “She doesn’t get to feel hurt. Why do I have to feel the pain?”

I didn’t have an answer other than he has to trust God and he will learn and be tougher and better for going through this.

Then he later relayed a conversation he had with someone else. The person he talked to was angry with the person who hurt him. Then I started thinking about it, and quite a few people were angry.

So I put on my thinking cap.

Is it wrong to internalize and personalize everything we go through? After all, it is happening to US, isn’t it?

But what about when the situation we’re in involves other people?

We always want to say “Why is he/she doing this to me?”

“Can’t they see how this hurts?”

“How can they just move on while I’m still sitting here with the same feelings?”

What if the other person was unhappy, and is now happy. Should they be unhappy because we are unhappy?

Is it wrong for them to chase their heart and where they are feeling led because we are hurt because of it? They have dreams and aspirations and feelings too.

What if you were the one leaving a relationship?

Sometimes…many times, people change. Feelings change. Dreams change. We don’t mean to hurt people, but it may happen. Or it may happen to us.

As I tried to tell my friend, it’s one of those things that we hope to understand someday. Most times I think we will. We’ll get older, and look back at where we were 5, 10 and 20 years ago and see these are the moments that make us who we are.

I didn’t have a lot of girlfriends, but I dated quite a few ladies and had a fair amount of crushes. I was the “breaker-upper” only once.

I heard the classic break up speeches. You know how they go.

“It’s not you, it’s me.”

“There’s someone better for you.”

“We’re not going the same way”

“I still want to be friends….”

“I don’t want to ruin our friendship.”

I even heard “You’re just too good for me.”

But each one of those disappointments and sometimes crushing blows helped develop me into the person, man, friend and husband I have become.

At one time I looked back on those moments and I would be flooded with grief and anger. I wanted to know why it didn’t work out when I cared so much and poured so much into those relationships.

I don’t think I ever got an answer to the “Why?” question I would inevitably ask.

Every now and then I’ll run into someone I used to date. Or I’ll run into someone that keeps in touch with them. And when I see where they are and where I am, I see that it never would have worked out. Either I wouldn’t have been the man they needed, or maybe they wouldn’t have been the lady I needed. They are chasing their dreams. They are married. They are engaged. They are single and chasing careers.

I can hear God saying to me, “See, Nate. You didn’t think you could go on, but you did. Look where they are now. Look where you are. You wouldn’t be where you are, where I need you to be if you held on to what you thought you needed back then.”

Then I smile and think about my life, my wife, my job, my family……

Wow. How did I get here? How do we get there?

You just learn to move on. You learn to trust again. You learn to love again…and stronger than the love you had before.