When Love Says Goodbye

Sometimes love has to say goodbye…for no fault of its own but simply for its own sake. Sometimes it leads you to a place you never expected you’d be. You find yourself in its arms, barely able to speak, tears flooding your eyes, saying goodbye for the last time.

Sometimes love is the only possible thing that gives you the strength to do just that. You wake up on a morning no different from any other and you know that this is the day. The one you’ve avoided. The one you’ve put off for far too long….

Your heart hurts. Your mind is cluttered. And your stomach sick. …Until you find yourself hand in hand with the man you love, walking beside him for the last time. You feel his arm wrapped tightly around your waste and cherish it. And as you sit down beside him, you can’t speak. You don’t want to speak. Speaking would mean the end. It would mean the puzzle is set and the picture is something different than you had hoped for….You, apart from him…walking away. But you could choose to not walk away. You could choose to not speak and nothing would need to change. You could spend another evening together, laughing as he wrestles you to the ground and taunts you with tickles. Or watch Netflix much too late into the evening and allow him to cuddle the heck out of you. But you know you can’t. You know that strength is a virtue and that love is selfless and says goodbye when two worlds are meant to move apart. 

So the decision is made. It was made long before this moment. And as you sit next to him, those familiar fingers intertwined with yours, all you know to do is let the tears begin to flow. And you begin to speak between sobs and a breaking voice and try to explain the thing that you both know needs little explaining…and then you say those words, the ones you’ve dreaded your whole life. The words that mark the end. The words that turn your tears into a waterfall….about “breaking up” and saying goodbye…

And you look into his eyes… grasp his hands tighter and wait for him to speak.… And instead of confusion, anger or hurtful words he scoops you into his arms, sets you in his lap and allows tears to form…. No words. Just tears. And there you are, two people who care for each other more than you’ve ever known in a moment that couldn’t last long enough, holding each other for the final time…And it’s in that moment that you both know, this is goodbye.

And sometimes that’s what love does. It has to say goodbye. For reasons too hard to put to words and for the best of both people. Because you realized long ago that love isn’t “all you need.” And you realize that that is okay. That sometimes two worlds can come together. Grow together. Learn together. Laugh together. Love together. Cry together. Romance together. Be together…for a time. And in the end still discover that they don’t belong together forever. Discover that they are not their own. That they belong to something…to someone so much bigger. A God who created them and who knew this day was coming. A God who joined their paths and used them in this time of life to learn from one another. A God who knew long ago that for reasons too hard to fully understand, this is how it is supposed to end. And so it does. And there is both pain and beauty in the process.

And that’s what brings hope…that the end of one journey is always the beginning of another. The beginning of being someone new. The beginning of putting into practice all that you have learned from an incredibly amazing person who made your life better simply through being a part of it. The beginning of seeing the world differently and being more ready than ever for the next chapter. The beginning of healing. And the beginning of learning to love again. 

And that is the tragedy of love. No matter how beautiful and full, there will always be an end. Whether it be after a lifetime lived together or 10 years or 5 or just 1. Love always has a goodbye. But the goodbye doesn’t always have to be a goodbye to loving that person, it can merely be a goodbye to intertwining your life with theirs. And that is what I’m learning, that sometimes it is okay to say goodbye to love and still love in spite of the loss, the sadness and the pain. And even though there will always be pain in goodbye there can be beauty too. If we will only learn to see the beauty. Chase the beauty. And let it transform us. I would encourage you if you have had to say goodbye to someone you love in the past or if you are in the process of saying goodbye that you would find healing and freedom in your goodbye. That you would surrender it to God and trust that He was in it and He ordained it all along. That your goodbye is just a hello to trusting Him and embarking on a new journey. 

Below is a song written by my beautiful friend Natalie Closner and her 2 sisters that has spoken to me a lot about both the pain and beauty of saying goodbye to someone you love. Check out more of their music at thebandjoseph.com

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K7pPqf7zw8]