Sprint

People will avoid you like the plague when loss, pain, illness or hardship strikes.  It's as if they're afraid your brush with chaos is "contagious," like they will catch turmoil from being around you. 

It's amazing to watch people sprint out of your life with urgent vigor, while crushing blows hit your life at every angle.  You stand there, stunned, tear-stained and shocked as their footsteps echo the dark path out of your life.

Those who once cried bitter tears into your sweater are running with feverish angst, to get away from your disaster as it unfolds.

Once the smoke clears, your stock goes up, and the pendulum swings back in your favor, people start walking back toward you, but 

it's a looong way back. 

By the time they decide you're worth hanging around with, the chasm between you and them has grown even wider, because you've grown.  You've now outgrown your need for them throughout the long tear-filled days you survived after they walked out on you. 

You're stronger, wiser, better.  You've matured past being needy, insecure and deficient. 

They try to bridge the distance, but it just isn't the same. There's an unspoken strain, a stain from when they abandoned you in your darkest hour.  

The scourge is now gone; you're no longer tainted goods, but you are more protective of your space now.  You're guarding your time, your emotions, your headspace.  

You're in a different place now, and you can't apologize for it. 

What those who have left you don't realize is that you have graduated to a peaceful space that is no longer controlled by others' acceptance or rejection of you. You've learned to thrive even when the only voice you can hear is your own, and the only shoulder you can lean on is God's. 

Times have changed, and it's in the air. People can tell that you're better, and you're on the rise.  And here they come. 

But you've also changed.  For the better. You're not wounded; you're healed. You're not deficient; your whole. The hole in your heart left by their absence is closed up and no scar remains. 

You no longer depend on the support of finicky characters; your life is focused, directed and balanced. Clarity is yours, peace is yours; you are renewed.  

And the good news is, your life's happiness is no longer hanging in the balance of unreliable hands; you've taken yourself out of those shaky situations and learned to stand on sacred, solid ground. 

This is the upside of being let down, abandoned, discarded, disappointed, left for dead....

When you rise, you're standing up taller, confident in wholeness, and in the One who never leaves.