Dear Younger Me

Dear younger me,

I find you on the floor in your bedroom, cuddled into the corner of your closet. You are holding yourself tightly; arms wrapped around your knees, your body curled into the fetal position. Your hair is damp and your moans illicit pain deep within my soul, for your heart is breaking, slowly, into tiny little pieces.

I sit beside you and see these pieces of your heart scattered around you. I see how you have felt a piece chip away every time your parents have passed each other by with silence and a mere nod; I have seen how pieces fell the day your mom packed up her things into bags and boxes. I know that your heart feels scattered right now: you are fragile, and are clutching to your heart's broken pieces as best you can. I wish I could tell you that a year changes things, and that your heart is put together as time passes, but sadly, the adage that time heals all wounds isn't true. Only God can do that, and His timing isn't ours.

I see that your lips are moving slowly, and I can make out your prayer. It's more of a cry, really, and I hear the desperation in your voice. You are begging God to take you home into His arms, to free you of this pain and darkness. Although you can't see it then, you will see that God answered your prayer; just not in the way you thought he would.

As you journey through the next year in your life, you will struggle every day. You will feel pain, some days more heavily than that moment in your closet. But what you will find is that in your pain, and amidst the broken pieces of your heart, God is your Home. He is your shelter; He is your strength. He doesn't leave nor forsake you. This will be a lesson you will have to learn over and over; and it's a painful one. But you will start to see how this is truth.

You will learn that it is in the broken places that we sometimes discover wholeness. It will take some time, but you will see that your pain has shaped you into a beautiful caring, loving individual. You will learn that what others intend for a curse, God intends for a blessing. Your pain has allowed you to feel more – for you are broken to be healed to be broken for others. You will find beauty in this brokenness, my love. I know you don't feel like it right now, curled into yourself on the floor in the closet. But you will. This I promise you.

Love always,

Your older self