New Year, No Regrets

Emptiness (Part 1):

                It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, she thought miserably as she stared in the mirror at the large bruise forming around her eye. Life was supposed to work itself out. Wasn’t it? Everyone had always told her that she could be anything that she wanted to be. She could have anything she wanted if she worked hard enough. She just wanted happiness. But happiness seemed to elude her all the time recently.

                How long had it been since she had noticed the emptiness? A few months… no, closer to a year. She was so bored with life. A perpetual hamster wheel of nothingness… the same people, the same routines. Her dream of starting her own small business fading slowly as the obstacles began to stack up. She had worked hard. She deserved to live her dream.  

                Fat, ugly tears began to slide down her cheeks, and her mascara blurred underneath her eyes.

                No, life was not supposed to be like this.

                And then… three months ago she had met Bryan. A smart, handsome, athletic guy who was three years into college and coached a little league team. An absolute sweetheart, everyone agreed. They had met by accident, she had filled in for a friend at her job and he came in to order coffee… and stayed for two hours, sitting in the window, smiling at her every time she glanced over. After her shift was over he confessed to her that he was trying to work up the courage to ask her out.

                She grabbed the brush off the counter and hurled it at the mirror, but it bounced off harmlessly and landed on the floor, mocking her.

                She had fallen for his sweet, shy act. Why couldn’t she see what a jerk he was from the beginning?

                Everything was great. Everything was fine. Too bad Bryan was an alcoholic.

                He had been going to AA for awhile, trying to stop. But he had never told her that. And he decided, two months into their relationship, that he liked drinking too much to stop. And sure, everyone had their problems. She had her fair share. But why hadn’t he told her?

                He was a monster when he drank. She had a few friends who would go out and get absolutely wasted but they were the harmless type; singing Shirley Temple and Britney Spears songs and running around the parking lot with their pants around their ankles. But not Bryan. He became angry, sometimes violent.

                Like tonight.

                She didn’t know he had been drinking. She only wanted to confront him, to ask him to stop. For her. Her ignorance had led her to believe that if she asked him to stop, he would. But he didn’t. He wouldn’t.

                Her eye began to throb with the memory, as if only the thought of the injury caused the pain to worsen. She had told him she would leave him if he didn’t leave the bottle and come with her to get help.

                And so he had hit her.

                In the face.

                She had only wanted to be happy. Why had this happened?

We all have an emptiness. We all have a hole that needs to be filled. For this new year, I want to lean on Jesus to fill my empty void. Because nothing else will work. Anything else will leave us empty, looking for our next fix, our next relationship, our next drink, our next anything that seems to give us temporary happiness.

There is no way I can guarantee happiness for myself or anyone else for a year, or a month, even a minute. Life is hard sometimes, and bad things happen. But I know that there is Someone greater than anything this world can throw at me, Someone who can give me peace and hold me through my heartaches.

My new year's resolution is to surrender everything I have to the one who gave me life. Because my Savior is the only one who can fill my emptiness.