The Thankful Project Day 4: An Experience

I'm linking up with Kenzie at Chasing Happy for The Thankful Project. It's Day 4 and today's prompt is "an experience."

For as long as I can remember, I have been in this constant search for love and happiness. How many relationships do you have to go through before you find "the one"? One, two, three? It varies, really. For some people, it doesn't take long. They fell in love and got married to their high school sweetheart. But for many, it involves multiple tries, and heartbreaks, which is what happened to me.

One particular relationship really hurt me. I should have seen it coming. The signs were there. I didn't have his heart. He was still holding on to some lingering feelings for his ex-girlfriend. He broke up with me before he came and visited his parents. The reason behind this was that "he didn't want to worry about my feelings." When he came back, I found out that he kissed seven girls during his vacation. I thought it was a messed up thing to do. If you say you love somebody, you don't go around kissing multiple girls just because you two were broken up. I forgave him anyway. He said meaningless things, that made me feel insignificant. We got back together, but not too long after, I found out he was exchanging nude photos with his ex-girlfriend. Looking back, I don't understand how I dealt with being cheated on and being lied on over and over again. I suppose it was the false hope I had that someday he would see me for me, someone who truly loved him, and accept him for who he was. But that never happened. Perhaps, not til the end, when I was finally over it, when I was fed up with all the pain.

I'm a true believer that every experience God gives us, every person and obstacles He puts into our lives, is the perfect preparation for a future He has planned for us. We may not see, or understand, it the moment we are experiencing it, but the lesson is there. I'd like to think that in order to move on from a painful experience, we must understand why we felt the way we did and why we no longer need to feel it. It's much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.

I didn't understand why I went through the things I did in that relationship until I found the love of my life, my husband. I realized that God was preparing me for something better, something more worth it.

Though I felt really deceived and hurt by that relationship, I accepted, and had faith that God knew best. Even though I didn't see things clear, I'm now thankful for the things that happened in the past. If it wasn't for liars, I wouldn't know the qualities of trustworthy people. If it wasn't for the pain I went through, I wouldn't know the value of happiness. Each experience in our lives was absolutely necessary in order to have gotten us to the next place, and the next, up until this very moment. That relationship has changed me. I'm stronger because I had to be. I'm smarter because of my mistakes. I'm happier because I have overcome the sadness I've known and I'm wiser because I've learned from my experience.