Masterpiece of Broken

It’s over!” I yelled at him in his living room. “You were doing amazing. You were really living, and now you’re just a shell!”

The moment you decide the puzzle is way too much, even after you have all the border pieces put together and a few clusters of the inside together, you grab the box, open it, and sweep it all back in, saying, “Nope, this is too hard.” Before you even really begin, before the beauty really takes place, you decide the pieces are overwhelming you.

“Honestly, Amy, I just don’t love you. I love drugs way more. I chose drugs. I don’t want a relationship.”

The clarity that came from Justin’s voice that evening was enough. I grabbed a couple things I had with me and walked out. I went home and cried for what seemed like forever in my mama’s and daddy’s arms. I remember just crying, and my poor daddy, he was so lost. He kept saying, “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad. When is Justin going to come over? I miss talking with him.” Oh, the stream of tears only got worse. I told him exactly what happened and Justin’s word-for-word statement to me.

I felt so limp and broken in Daddy’s arms. He hugged me so tight. Then he lifted me up to look in his eyes and said something I’ll always cherish and never forget: “Baby girl, I’ll love you forever. You don’t need any guy. You have me for your entire life.”

I looked at him and hugged him so tight that day. Mama sat shedding tears of love for me and the words Daddy had spoken over me.

I realized that day that there was an addiction, a deeper addiction that was more than I could handle, drugs. I couldn’t change, help, or fix him. I was no match for where Justin was headed. I was just a teen girl who fell in love with an amazing guy. He was a guy who fell in love with a girl but fell quickly into a deeper love, his addiction to drugs. I had floated on clouds for a long time, but then I fell through them that day. The dense clouds that I stayed above began to part, and I began to sink. The view was quickly different, and I felt more broken than the last time I had this feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was swept off my feet in a relationship. We had talked about how we believed God had brought us together for life. It was then that I became not only broken but completely crushed. Had I let someone in too soon? Maybe if I had just kept hiding my brokenness. I had shared my secrets with him. He was the first person I ever spoke to about true love. I had told him why holding hands, kissing, and being intimate would never be easy for me, and the respect that poured out of that gentleman was just too good to be true.

A couple of months passed. Senior year was closing in, and I saw that black Ranger every once in a while as I drove down the street. But as for words, they were not spoken between us. I was falling into a rebellious stage. I rebelled against my curfew and against Mama’s desires for me. All the scattered pieces that fell to the ground the day Justin and I broke up and I walked out were still not all back together for me. Clearly, in that stage I was broken, and as I look back from my adult perspective today, that time was a mess. But thankfully, it was a short-lived one. I had started to prepare myself for the next step as school would end. I sat down with my parents one evening at our dining room table as Mama finished making dinner. I wanted to chat as I had scheduled a recruiter from the air force to come and talk with us about what I would be committing to when the school year ended. I found myself excited about what was to come. Of course Mama was fearful, and Daddy, well, he was Daddy. He never had much to say until he had something to say. As that dinner ended, I went to my room, grabbed the remote, and flipped on the TV. I threw myself on that daybed and thought, This is the start I want. My New King James Bible sat next to my bed, and as my eyes made their way to it, I picked it up. I flipped through it, though I was not even sure what it was I wanted. I merely wanted a sign, an answer to my question, “What next, God?”