"Here's To the You That I Thought Was Me"

In the beginning of my junior year of highschool, I fell in love. It was real. Yet, within the next two years, nothing became of it.

My heart broke.

In last season's finale of Grey’s Anatomy, Christina was left at the altar on her wedding day. Later as she was ripping away her elegant wedding dress, she said something to the effect of "He’s gone! I’m free!" through tears and laughter. My fellow Grey’s Anatomy fans told me how confused they were by this contradiction. Christina loved Burke. How could she be happy that he was gone?

But I immediately understood.

I had been so in love with the aforementioned person that I would do anything possible for him, and more. My life was about being what he wanted and what I was sure that I wanted. I rescheduled my life’s agenda to fit his.

When those are the only facts that someone knows about our relationship – that I changed who I was for him – I’m sure they think I’m weak and shallow.

That is not true. In some ways, I was stronger and more stubborn then than I am now. At the start of my junior year, it wasn’t a "melt at his touch" or "succumb to his every demand" type of relationship. However, by the end of that summer, it was. So what happened in between? Whatever it was, it didn’t work. He never gave me the devotion I unfailingly offered to him with every thought and breath. It had been a process of total submission. And when he left, I found myself submitting to a vacuum. I was still morally the same person that I had been before, in actions anyway, except I had emptied myself of myself. Instead of filling the void with Christ, I had filled it with another one of Christ’s children... and a strayed one at that. What was it that kept drawing me so close to him even though he wasn’t moving at all?

I heard these lyrics by Casting Crowns, and my question was answered:

It’s a slow fade
When you give yourself away.
It’s a slow fade
When black and white are turned to gray.
Thoughts invade.
Choices are made.
A price will be paid
When you give yourself away.
People never crumble in a day.

I had slowly let him invade my thoughts and dominate my choices. Then the price I paid was a broken heart. And after I crumbled, it was a "slow fade" back into Jesus’ arms, as well -- so slow that I didn’t realized I wasn’t ruled by that person until I heard from him last week. Christina’s words came back, but this time I heard them in my own voice... through tears and laughter– "He’s gone. I’m free." And I discovered that a love even more real had gained victory over the vacuum of my heart.