Breakups, Faith, Loneliness, and Growing Insecurities

Yes, you’ll have the first tearful “It’s over” sitting in the front seat of your Honda or on a park swing. Anger and sadness will whirl around your heart like two uncoordinated dancers stepping on each other’s toes.

Then 1–2 months later, inevitably, there will be “talk.” Because you feel lost. Time has granted you amnesia of all the reasons you broke up in the first place. You find an old sweatshirt of theirs that they forgot in your car and you can’t help but smell it.

Your heart aches. Your hand reaches for your phone before your mind even catches up. Your body and mind are no longer working in unison. You agree to meet up.

They smile that same crooked smile. You see the scar on their wrist from the bike ride crash you had together on that tandem bike on Coronado Island. You miss each other. You hug. Their hair smells the exact same. You inhale deeply. It feels all so familiar. Why in the world did you break up in the first place?!

But then … she forgets to call like she used to. Or he checks out the waitress like he’s a judge for Miss USA.

And then the “real breakup” begins. And gird those loins my friend, because in the second breakup there will be a lot more breaking. Which is unfortunately how it has to be. Because there are a lot of ties that bind, and when you’re severing those, it’s going to be painful.

After the official “second” breakup, when it’s really over, comes the heavy lifting of really really breaking up. You’ve broken up with the person, but now you have to start cutting all the strings that are attached and intertwined. And I don’t need to tell you that this is where the real breaking of breaking up happens. It might take more time and tears than you’ll ever want to admit. But there will come that morning when you’ll wake up, and it will be over. This time for real for real. And the funny thing is you won’t even notice. Because the moment the breakup is really over is the moment you stop wondering when is this ever going to end. Let me offer this piece of encouragement that a friend once offered me on the doorstep of heartbreak and severing of the “second breakup.” If you thought this person was “The One,” and they are clearly not, think how amazing, how different it will feel when you actually date The One. And I can say now, twenty years since that painful personal breakup of mine … after being married seventeen years now with four children, that is one trillion percent true. I thank God for that breakup that I thought broke me. It didn’t. The breakup guided me to my amazing wife and life that I have now.

Faith is not about having all the right answers. Faith is not about dressing up in your Sunday best and making sure every step is safe and elegant. Faith is not about presenting a body free of blemishes and scars. Faith is to stop pretending like you have all the answers altogether, or that you even know the right questions. Faith is walking in as you are. It is being stripped down to your bare essentials and simply saying, Here I am. Faith is not about impressing the judge to win a trophy. Faith is about standing there as the judge tells you that you’re cherished and you have what it takes, blemishes and all. Faith is simply hearing, and saying yes.

If you’re in your 20s, you’re a part of the most uber-connected, plugged in, engaged, informed, yet Insanely.Isolated.Generation in the history of the universe. How can this be? Is it because we’re just simply not talking? I mean really talking, apart from status updates and texts? Maybe it’s just our culture’s pastime to always appear like we have our life together, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. To buy that convertible when you can barely afford rent on your small apartment. I’m not sure. We’ve all experienced the frustration of our 20s going nothing as planned, so why do we still feel like we’re the only ones who are struggling? This lie that we’re all alone in our struggle is a powerful magnifier of depression, anxiety, and confusion in our 20s. It’s vital we blow this ugly lie up. So right now, if you feel like you’re stuck between being adult and child, neither growing nor grown — you’re not alone. If you feel like you’re struggling through a Quarter-Life Crisis you swore you’d never have — you’re not alone. If you’re wondering when you’ll ever feel like yourself again — you’re not alone. If you’re searching for a place to hang up your coat because it actually feels like home again. If you’re staring at your gray cubicle walls wondering how the heck you ended up here. If you’re working at your “home office,” which consists of a tiny desk and a chair, feeling very much alone. If you’re wondering if God changed His number and forgot to pass the message on to you. — you know what I’m going to say. Call a friend. It’s up to you to make the first move. Again, don’t be afraid to be the Go-First-Friend. Share war stories and strategies for dodging bullets. You’re not alone. And just knowing that fact can be enough to breathe life into that which has felt suffocating.

In 8th grade, insecurity became a permanent fixture in my life. Like that 1970s oak entertainment center in your parents’ living room—freakishly huge, yet it’s been there so long you don’t even notice it.

An acne attack kicked off my Sweet 13 Insecurity Party—acne of the face, chest, and back variety, all making themselves quite at home as my uninvited guests. Then top that off with braces and love handles the size of Coke cans, and my Insecurity cruise ship was sailing through the choppy waters of puberty with a Titanic-esque chance of survival.

That’s why I have memories of spending a portion of my 8th grade dance hiding under a table. As lights flashed all around and “Love Shack” boomed over the speakers at the school dance, I lay there concealed by an oversized plastic tablecloth. I pictured all the popular girls desperately searching for me like their childhood dog had gone missing. And once they found me, ahhhh yes … they would sweep me out from under the table and parade me around the dance floor, showering me with kisses like a war hero who just came back to the States.

But my homecoming never happened. I wanted to be paraded as a war hero. Instead I just fought my own war alone under a table.