The Good In Goodbye

The Good in Goodbye

It’s Sunday morning and I literally just got through practicing yoga. Feeling charged and ready to head to church for some good teaching, I couldn’t help but feel a little different. For the past nine to ten months, I’ve been struggling with some internal things. We all know that I seem to be the queen of misguided relationships and since last summer, I haven’t really had a desire to be with anyone. I guess it really takes that last kick in the gut for you to throw your hands up and say, “I’ve had it with relationships.” However, thankfully, I hadn’t reached the point of saying, “Jesus is all I need.” He’s amazing but I know He wants more for me than that.
Anyway, for the past few months, I’ve clammed up, built the second wall of Jericho around myself and turned off my emotions. As the months progressed, I gained weight a little weight, I stopped doing things that I’d ordinarily do and my writing began to suffer. I thought it was because of my hurt feelings but then about a month ago, I went into the bathroom and peeled off my clothes layer for layer and stepped into the shower and had the most enlightening conversation that I’ve ever had. I did very little talking and a whole lot of listening.
In a very soft voice, God whispered to me, “You’re not yourself. You don’t feel like yourself because you’re not yourself. You’ve given up a lot. You’ve allowed yourself to become too vulnerable and now you’re scrambling to piece yourself back together but the parts that fell off you never needed to begin with.”
I kind of scowled and whispered, “What does that mean?” He took me back to myself this time last year having taken several months to purge myself from yet another interesting choice in men but I hadn’t taken long enough. I met someone. The idea of a new prospect, excited me and we seemed extremely compatible except for a few issues that were impossible to overlook. Needless to say, things ended the way they always seem to do and I found myself right where I was, talking to God in the shower.
So, I asked simply, “What do you think I should do?” That was the most vulnerable I’d allowed myself to be since October of last year. “First, you were never breaking up with a man but you were always breaking up with yourself. You just would never let go of the parts of yourself that you no longer needed. Instead of finding the GOOD in goodbye, you lugged all the old stuff along with you. In the process you couldn’t understand why you were so broken, so confused, so disconnected from the one person you’re supposed to understand….. YOURSELF.”
Of course, I began to cry and I asked, “But why?”
“You have to fall back in love with yourself again. Allow yourself to say goodbye to all of the bad memories and even the good ones that are attached to those. (Sometimes we can hang on to the good things about a person even though they are the farthest thing from what God wants us to have). Start liking little things about yourself. Learn to respect and cherish yourself, the way you used to.” This part got me, He said, “The Ashley I used to know would never just accept anything and that’s what you’ve started to do.”
I cried but it was a release and I left all of it in the shower to wash down the drain. I don’t know why I felt the need to share this. Most times I write out of personal revelation to help someone that may stumble across this blog. The last thing that I wanted to share with you was this. As my yoga practice came to an end this morning and my muscles are relaxed and my mind was cleared, I whispered to myself, “I feel like a newer version of myself.”
I got a response, of course. A gentle whisper. “Butterflies carry the same DNA as their former self but they never take the cocoon with them on a new journey.”