Anger, Abandonment, and the Man I’m Becoming

Something funny, interesting, and relevant that I recently saw on the topic of suffering:

I reached for her.

Not because I believed she was there.

I knew I was alone.

But grief has memory. And the body remembers what safety once felt like.

I let my leg stretch toward the empty side of the bed like I used to — just to imagine the presence that used to be there.
Somehow that small gesture hurt… and helped.

It gave me a strange, grief-filled peace.

Then came the deeper ache:

I realized part of why I avoid “normal life spaces” — real beds, real homes, traditional comforts — is because they hold memories that echo in my mind.

Beds seem to hold ghosts, and homes hold reminders. The creature comforts we enjoy in America just feel like loss to me.

Navigating those kinds of spaces reminds me of the loss I experienced. Like a persistent wound.

But there was something else stirring beneath the surface — something harder to name, but important to tell the truth about, something that I believe is a tragedy:

I feel abandoned, Mid Story.

I don’t mean to sound accusatory or vindictive. And I don’t want to play the victim.

But knowing that I am healing and becoming the man that God intends me to be, and the person who once knew me best isn’t here to witness the transformation, it is hurtful. And I am filled with grief that we are growing separately.

I was naming pain instead of numbing it.
I was working hard.
I was stepping into the kind of man that I prayed (and she prayed) that I would one day be.

And the worst part, from my perspective, is that the blessing of walking through sanctification together — experiencing the redemption and blessings on the other side of this healing — was stripped from us prematurely, and it wasn’t my desire to close this chapter. Yet, I was given no say in how it ended.

I’ve heard her pray for someone new and further along than me. And that hurts, because one day, in time, I will be the man that she is praying to be with.

And here’s another difficult voice, “Why couldn’t she stay with me through the process, isn’t that the whole point? Experiencing growth together.”

Then the story shifted in a way I never expected it to. My relationship ended.

There’s a part of me, the Healer, who still wants to live honorably, who refuses to weaponize my story, who wants to bless even the people who wounded me.

There’s also the Inner Son. The part of me who keeps asking:

“If I grow, will those close to me stay long enough to see who I’m becoming? Or will I eventually reach a point where I’ve drifted too far to be understood by my support system?”

I must fight the fear-filled victim mindset of “since I was open with her and she left, I can never be myself with anyone ever, or they will leave me/not understand me.”

And then there is the Future Father in me, the man I one day hope to be, who wants to tell his children:

“I didn’t harden. I didn’t quit. I kept growing even when life felt unfair, all with the hope that one day, I’d meet you, son/daughter.”

Part of this healing process will include the ghost of someone who is no longer in the story. And a lingering voice of “what-I-wish-she-still-cared-about”,
mixed with the disorienting fear of disappointing this person who already walked away.

That ghost showed up today at 3 a.m.
I did what I could to remain present.
To let that part of me breathe and exist in all of its anger, grief, bitterness, and resentment.
I am working on not apologizing for my desire to feel whole again. I’m not apologizing for feeling that what I am enduring is an injustice that God hates.

I am working on letting myself feel the anger — not to punish anyone or retaliate, but to honor the wound and to heal.

And I am reminded that it is okay to “be angry and do not sin”. I am working on that.

And now, in honesty, I have to acknowledge my part in the distortion and brokenness. I wasn’t perfect in that story. I had patterns that were unhealthy, reactive, and at times harmful and destructive. I contributed to the fracture in ways I’m not proud of. But naming that isn’t the end — it’s part of the redemption God is working in me now.

And this is where God begins to rewrite the story:

I am becoming the man I said I would become.
And I’m trusting that it will still happen, single, married, divorced, or remarried, all on God’s timeline when I submit myself to Him and His Perfect Will and plans for me.
Which likely won’t look like how I want it to, or how I ever imagined it to be.

And that’s okay.

I’m learning that this healing journey is for me, and not for anyone else, nor to spite anyone. It’s about telling the truth without weaponizing it.
It’s about meeting the pain gently instead of outrunning it.
It’s about becoming the kind of man God can trust with a family, a calling, a life — even when no one sees.

So today, this is my Mid Story Moment:

I am sad.
I am angry.
I am becoming.
I am still covered by the Blood of Jesus, and Still Called to do more for the kingdom.
I am grieving the parts of my story that feel unfair.
And I am trusting that God never wastes a wound, especially the ones that wake you up at 3 a.m.

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