Twenty nine years ago, my fiancé broke up with me. I had just returned from a nine-month overseas photography assignment. This was pre-cell phone and I was totally blindsided. These kind of relational ruptures are aways messy. This one was even more so because we had the same circle of friends and were both leaders in a small, urban church. To complicate matters, he said he never wanted to talk to me again. There would be no opportunity to process what happened and certainly no apology.
I was devastated. It wasn’t simply the loss of a friend. I had felt with some degree of certainty that God had orchestrated our relationship and prompted us to share our lives together. That certainty devolved into deep doubt—not about the existence of God, but about my ability to discern his voice in prayer. I began to wonder if prayer, something that had always been central to my faith, was little more than me talking to myself.
Months after the engagement ended, I felt stuck both relationally and spiritually. I spiraled into shame and regret. Counseling and talking with close friends helped but I couldn’t seem to break through this internal impasse. One day while walking through a local arboretum, I sensed what I thought might be the Holy Spirit encouraging me to fast and pray for a week.
I know some folks actually enjoy fasting. I am not one of those people. I tend to get cranky and consumed with fantasies about food. Never-the-less, my desperation to get unstuck trumped my resistance. Four days into the water fast, I felt another nudge: “Forgive your ex. Completely. And don’t expect anything to come back to you because of this.”
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