Trigger Warning: This piece was written from the experience of trauma, grief, PTSD, and the journey of faith in the aftermath of heartbreak and broken dreams.
Dear God,
The story I lived in was beautiful. I walked into its lovely pages, bright-faced and wide-eyed, with stars on my dress and promises of tomorrow at my fingertips. I thought I reached an ending to my longing, where galaxies finally lit up the gaping void in my sky, where the colors I wished for embraced my blank canvas.
My journals dripped with the ink of answered prayers. Dear God, my dreams finally came true. I wrote. And there are more dreams on the way.
Until one night stole the story I loved.
I didn’t know it then, but this is what broken dreams feel like all along—everything is gone at once, the life I lived now dead at my feet.
I’m swept away from home, then thrown into a valley of bones. The impact shocks my mind as my fingers dig into the dirt, dry bones and shattered pieces grating at my skin. My body might not be dead from the fall, but everything else inside me might as well be. A weight in my chest twists into the unsettling realization that I was never safe in that story. Collapsible blocks make up my world, and I’ve tumbled through it.
The wind in this valley whispers like a ghost. “Hello, you’re powerless here. You’re standing on shifting sand. Everything is dangerous. Uncertain. Safety is a lie. You could die here.”
Grief quickly follows like a whirlwind blowing past my heart and ribs, and the skulls underneath my feet stare back at me. These bones were all my beautiful memories from that story. They were cherished. Celebrated. Loved
But now they’re all skeletons. The story I loved is now a graveyard.
I stare at the bones of what was left of my dreams…and I miss me.
I miss the old me who dreamt of stars and galaxies. I miss the girl whose gaze welcomed the iridescent sky, who believed that the darkness was already tamed behind the sun.
My caving mind learns that this is what trauma does. It splits you into two—before and after. You are separated from who you were, then turned into someone you don’t recognize anymore.
I don’t know how to face this version of me who forgot what the stars look like.
And here is where You find me—blood and guts spilled on the ground, broken dreams a shattered display of what a galaxy once was.
You behold my soul splitting at the dividing line, where I am changed.
You see me.
You move close.
You take my breaking mind into Your hands.
You can handle all my anger.
You listen to the heartbroken roar tearing out of my throat.
You stay, unflinching as I curse at the reality of what was done to me.
You don’t leave, even when the nights are harsh and I keep screaming out to You, “Where were You, God? Why, God?”
Somehow, Your hands are able to hold the bloody mess and the chaos of my broken heart.
And when I press You for answers, You don’t recoil. You don’t punish. You don’t abandon me in the dark as the doubts blacken my vision.
You stay like a steady flame, my last light in the pitch-black night. Even when I can’t see past the wreckage, and it takes time for me to feel You reaching out…
“God doesn’t steal, kill, or destroy. The enemy does all those things1. The injustice happens because we live in a sinful, fallen world,” a person from church said. “What happened to you wasn’t His desire for you. He grieves with you, but He is faithful to see You through it, to overcome it…”
They say You didn’t want this for me, nor did You plan it like a mastermind with cruel puppet strings. You don’t design the demise of dreams. Earth is an unstable stage caught in the spiraling dance of entropy. A cursed show where all endings lead to death.
And they say You were the reversal to all curses. The Resurrection. The Life. The God who heals. You’re the God who can make beauty out of ashes. The God who can line my cracks with gold.
But I still wonder…
Why couldn’t You just spare me from breaking this way?
Why would You place dreams in my heart only for them to break?
Why couldn’t You just make me numb, so that I’d cherish things less? So that, I’d hurt less?
My questions hang between us as you enter this valley with me. You sit with me in the darkness, counting each dry bone I’ve mourned over…
And, You’re the last one who feels safe.
You’re the last one I can hold on to.
“God is here,” Another whisper sings through this wretched valley.
God is here. In the darkness. In the doubts.
God is here. In the breaking and in the falling.
God is here. In the grief. In the pain.
He remains, still closer than my bruised skin and trembling clenched fists.
I don’t have all the answers now, and maybe I’m not ready for them yet. But You’re proving it again…
I still have You.
And even if the story I loved couldn’t stay with me forever, You tell me that You’re not done with my story yet.
