unimaginable anguish

Last night I dreamed. I dreamed a stranger, a woman I don’t know, a friend, a sister, came to me in unimaginable anguish. Her man was cheating. And I listened and I held her as she cried and I had no counsel.

Stay, go, try, leave. Who knows what to do?

I know in my dream what I wanted to do: I wanted to go to her man and say, with much love and no anger, just kind righteousness,

If you made a mistake, were selfish, fucked-up, then give up the other woman and go home and make it right. Because you can always make it right. But if you’re not in love with your woman, the woman crying in my arms, then let her go. Don’t make her suffer. Don’t make her try to get over this, try to get through this, try to forgive you, if you’re not willing to step into that forgiveness and earn it and live it.

Forgiveness is a heavy mantle. If it’s love you will suffer for it. And we say that someone who truly loves you won’t hurt you, won’t make you suffer, but that’s not true. Sometimes the one who loves you is the only one who can harm you.

And sometimes he can make it better.

And sometimes he doesn’t deserve you to make it better.

And god, it’s so hard to know until long after the fact which case is true.

Sometimes you suffer through it. At church this weekend, about something else entirely, the pastor said: don’t push through, pray through.

That sounds exactly right. Sometimes the fight you’re fighting isn’t your fight.

And so to you, strangersisterfriend who is suffering through, I have no counsel, only this: I have suffered through, too. I survived a dark time in our life and our love by asking myself this question: Have I done everything I can possibly do so that I know that I’ve not given up too soon? As long as the answer was no, I wasn’t finished.

I survived the unimaginable anguish. With coffee and sleeping pills and antidepressants, don’t judge.

And so can you. We always do.

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for my sisterstrangerfriend in unimaginable anguish. I dream of you. xoxo.