This post took several moments of reflection to finally put together. Better late than never.
The question recently arose "What were you doing when you were 25?".After some long, hard thoughts and putting the pieces together, it (finally) dawned on me, engaged. A long silence followed.
It has been over 2 1/2 years since the engagement ended and "changes" began in my life. In an unbelievable, crazy moment, I acknowledged that the person I am today is completely different than the person I was back then, in more ways than I even recognize or give myself credit for.
I have not spoken about the engagement, as this was a tool for "moving forward" with my life. I think the best means of learning is reflecting on life circumstances and extracting all you can from the moment. The blurriness of heartache has faded, and life reasons are much clearer, which gives me a perfect opportunity to share my feelings. I know I will never be able to fully put my experiences into words, but before this era of my life becomes mere sentences in my "life story", I want to document. Disclaimer: I am several months late in proclaiming with great happiness that my heart is healed from the hurt and filled with joy and contentment that the recovery process gave me.
For those who know me well and have endured hours of listening to me talk about this topic, the events that followed, my encouragement for a brighter future, my up's and down's, and my lectures about relationships, thank you. Your support, encouragement, and friendship has brought me where I am today.
This experience has taught me:
The question recently arose "What were you doing when you were 25?".After some long, hard thoughts and putting the pieces together, it (finally) dawned on me, engaged. A long silence followed.
It has been over 2 1/2 years since the engagement ended and "changes" began in my life. In an unbelievable, crazy moment, I acknowledged that the person I am today is completely different than the person I was back then, in more ways than I even recognize or give myself credit for.
I have not spoken about the engagement, as this was a tool for "moving forward" with my life. I think the best means of learning is reflecting on life circumstances and extracting all you can from the moment. The blurriness of heartache has faded, and life reasons are much clearer, which gives me a perfect opportunity to share my feelings. I know I will never be able to fully put my experiences into words, but before this era of my life becomes mere sentences in my "life story", I want to document. Disclaimer: I am several months late in proclaiming with great happiness that my heart is healed from the hurt and filled with joy and contentment that the recovery process gave me.
For those who know me well and have endured hours of listening to me talk about this topic, the events that followed, my encouragement for a brighter future, my up's and down's, and my lectures about relationships, thank you. Your support, encouragement, and friendship has brought me where I am today.
This experience has taught me:
- That the engagement was the turning point in my life, to date.
- God had His hands in my hurt only to provide me a better life.
- Material things mean nothing over the value of soul searching and learning from my mistakes.
- There is no point on wishing ill will on anyone. It clutters your heart with negative emotions.
- Hitting rock bottom only means there is one direction to move.
- Bearing the title "ex fiance" does not mean I am a bad person.
- Who I am. I needed to discover me before I can give myself to someone else (I needed to change along the way, but the key ingredients will always remain constant).
- Marriage does not happen for everyone at the same time. Everyone's life journey is different.
- Marriage is not the key to happiness. When I look at "love" at an angle different than marriage, my world and view of life has shifted.
- I never want take anyone forgranted.
- How I have been filled with thankfulness for every new day on this earth.
- How big of a heart I have..
- My family always comes first.
- Good friendships will truly carry me through anything, good or bad.
- I cannot be afraid to admit my mistakes, but I had to do myself a favor and learn from them.
- To always do my best to hold on to the positives and drop the negatives.
- To never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever settle (regardless of how old I am). Life is too short.
- To learn more about myself and all that is life than I ever thought one unpleasant situation could bear.
- Life lessons I will carry with me forever.
- The value of friendship & more about the gift of love
- The need to respect others.
- I am strong.
- I am unique.
- Interests I never knew I had such as photography, teaching sunday school, running races, baking, & valued girl time
- I can fund my own life.
- I need to have my own apartment and a place I can call "mine". This is what this phase of my life requires.
- How thankful I am for the ability to travel to places I may have never seen otherwise
- That I may have never landed in my current city which opened the door to my current job in Washington DC. I can't imagine where I would be?
In short, this life circumstance hurt so bad at the time. It took years to fully heal, but I would never trade it for the world. I have no regrets. It made me who I am today. I am a female who knows herself, and what she wants out of life. I may have learned some lessons the hard way, but they were and will continue to be God's way.
And the if's, and's, why's, how's, should I, would I, could I's are not worth taking away from a life-changing time in my life!
Wonderful post. I can't tell you how many of my friends "settled" and are now lost and unhappy.
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