What I know right now.

My dear daughter,

Some day you will be in the place I am now. Some day your heart will be rent, you will wonder what happened to the love you'd been promised, and that sharp, still desire to beat something will fill your chest and make your fingers twitch for a knife handle to close around. I do not envy you this time, dear. I can only say that I have been there as well, that I am there now. As I write, I feel your pain.

I don't know what happened. I simply wasn't enough. There's nothing I could have done. There is nothing which could have prevented this. The woman that I am, the woman God made me to be, is not enough to pass someone's test.

I thought that I was. I thought that I was strong. I thought that he would love me as I had loved him for so long but dared not hope. And I was right not to dare it.

The pain I feel is profound. My fingers ache. My throat closes in on itself. My heart beats slower. Weaker. As if looking for a reason to continue beating. Finding none, it listlessly beats on, hoping that a reason will arrive sooner rather than later. It has no purpose now, only to keep me alive. It beats for no one.

I had hoped never to feel this again. Food turns to ash in my mouth. Colors fade from the world like a painter washing away his watercolors. I have to remind myself to shower, to eat, to get out of bed. To breathe in and out.

God has mysterious ways of working. You always think you know what He's up to, but you never do. And this world, this fallen life, is so full of heartache that sometimes you have to wonder if it's worth it. I do. Sometimes I plead with God to come quickly, to remove these shackles that bind me. But He doesn't come, and I have to soldier on, bear the pain, put one foot in front of the other.

This is the time, dear, when you will realize who your true friends are. They are the ones who find you standing outside at your birthday party, crying your eyes out. They are the ones who hug you and hold on tight, forcing more tears from your tired eyes. They are the ones who hold your hand and drive you home, silent as you weep loudly into a Carl's Jr. napkin pulled from the glove box.

You feel weak and tired. You feel as if this time will never pass. But it will, dear one. It will. Sometimes you give your heart to someone and they are careless with it. Sometimes they reject it or throw it back in your face. And sometimes they hold it gently, knowing what a precious item it is, and they become frightened. They hand it back to you, saying "I'm not the right one to look after this." Regardless of the circumstances, you must now take your heart and put it back into safekeeping until the next time.

You might feel used. You might feel like damaged goods. You might feel as if no one could love you for who you are. It's not true. Some people choose to love us, and some don't. But the reasons for their choices are not our fault.

As I write this, dear daughter, I weep not just for my own heartache, but for yours. I wish I could prevent you from feeling it, but this is a part of growing up. Of living. You need not learn to love it, only to bear it.

You will learn to bear it with grace, and to cling to the Truth of the Cross in all this. It only takes time. Precious time.