Well, as I’ve said in my other blogs, life is a journey. And last weekend I decided to do something somewhat crazy, and drop everything for a few days to drive to Virginia. It was an experience I will not regret.
I know it has been a while since I’ve mentioned my marriage testimony in my blogs, and perhaps one day I will share our story, but for now, I will say this: overcoming the distance between, and dropping everything to pursue my marriage for a weekend was one of the greatest decisions I have made yet. Sometimes, the right thing to do is the most difficult thing to do at that moment, and that’s why it may seem crazy.
While I’d love to go on and on about the good that arose from last weekend, I’m actually going to share the experience that followed— starting with the car ride back home…
Its no secret that I am an emotional human being. I wear my heart on my sleeve. And as I left Virginia and headed back home to South Carolina, my emotions got the better of me. The truth is, everything was just fine, and my emotions in that moment were unexplainable. I got home late that night and went straight to bed, hoping to wake up and be back to the positive and happy woman I had become these past few months. But as I went about my day, the tears still came. At that point, I was beginning to worry. Being happy and passionate about life had become so normal for me— this feeling that I was encountering worried me because I didn’t understand why I was feeling so low. I went to sleep the next night, and the night after, hoping it wouldn’t return. But each day, without fail, it was still there and seemed to be getting worse.
Thursday rolled around, and I decided to take a day off to try and figure out what was going on. And I realized that after months of being strong and positive, it had all caught up to me. I was feeling defeated. I was feeling defeated because despite how positive I was being about my situation, it still was hard, and it still hurt. So I allowed myself to feel that defeat. I allowed myself to cry and to be emotional. But what I didn’t do, was allow myself to lose heart.
We’re going to have those days and those weeks. It doesn’t matter how strong you are, at some point in your life, you will feel defeated. Sometimes it will come when you least expect it— when it does, it slowly begins to drain you. You’ll be tempted to give up entirely… on your hope. On your job. On your marriage. On your family. Or even, on your life. Whatever your situation, you must not lose heart.
Its nothing to be ashamed of. Feeling defeat does not make you a weak person. It does not make you any less strong. In fact, the greatest test of our courage is to bear defeat without losing heart. Its being able to cry and feel the hurt, but not forgetting that there’s something far greater at work through your experience. You’re going to encounter many defeats in your life, but that does not mean you will be defeated.
When you find yourself in the midst of defeat, do what you need to do to recover. Take a nap, take a drive, cry, be angry, pray… do whatever it is that you need to do, without giving up and without losing heart.
As I push through my defeat of exhaustion and doubts, I believe that you too, can make it through. Hold onto that hope that things are going to get better, and accept that it’ll still be hard. And when you find yourself sinking into that temptation to give up, search your heart for every possible reason not to. Because I can promise you that no matter how dark it may seem right now, there will always be a reason not to give up.
And that reason, my dear friends, is why you can bear that defeat without losing heart.
Sincerely,
Adrienne
