There I lay on the bed, in a fetal position, where tears fell from my eyes and onto my numb fingertips. My divorce was final on September 21st, 2015. Just days before our anniversary. Even though I decided to file for divorce, I couldn’t help but feel the sheer pain and disappointment that came with that decision. You see, my ex-husband was the only man I truly ever loved, outside of my dad of course. He was the father of my three children, one of which was my unborn child. I cried. Not only because I missed him, but also because I knew that the journey that God was about to send me on was going to be tough. It was going to be hard being a single mom. I had never done it before. I never needed to.

So there I lay, crying silently because the kids were asleep in the next room. The way I felt, I know now how people die of a broken heart. My heart physically ached and longed for him. Maybe not even him, but who I wanted him to be. Who he had the potential to be. Who WE had the potential to be. But that was a dream, an alternate universe. Not the reality that I faced. I had accepted my decision, but how can I get my body to stop physically hurting? How can I get my head to stop aching from the pain of losing a limb? I read up on phantom pain once and how when people lose a limb, and they feel all the pain and sensations as if it’s still there. How it’s not a psychological issue of the limb not being there, but more of a physical one. My body physically ached because he was gone. He was gone months before it was final, but this time, he was never coming back and it physically hurt. I feel like I literally lost a piece of me in that divorce.

Laying there, numb and aching. I thought about my dreams, goals, and aspirations. How those would drastically change after September 21, 2015. It was in that very moment, that I prayed that God would take that pain from me. That he would see me in my brokenness and remove the physical pain of losing a limb and the psychological pain of losing my ex-husband. I didn’t want to continue to mourn the loss of what could have been or what he had the potential to be. I needed to recognize that he was not my knight in shining armor, God is. That he was not my end all be all, God is. That my marriage to him was not my God, God is my God. God is God.

So, as I lay there, I wiped the last tear drop from my face and I decided to get up.