The bend before the break.

I’m watching people I love bend.

And I can see, in the not-too-distant future, the break.

The break isn’t always bad. It just seems that sometimes pressure builds up around a situation and in the days before the resolution, it’s high intensity.

I sat on my couch with one of my dearest friends a few weeks ago. My doorbell rang, I was all pajama-ed out, but I answered. Tears streaming down her face, I stepped aside as she crossed to my couch and began to weep.

For hours.

No talking. No explanation. Just one hand holding mine, the other covering her eyes.

And three days later, she told everyone that she was moving to New York to pursue her acting career.

It wasn’t sadness. It was a deep bend. It was the highest point of tension. She knew what she had to do, but the anticipation of actually making the change, telling her people, and giving up the safety of our beautiful little world, was too much.

It is that moment when you have to decide what God is saying, what obedience looks like, and to what level you are willing to obey.

I listened to another friend today, struggling. Deeply struggling. He wears sadness like a trench coat. And his eyes have stopped dancing. But in his story, I see the bend. I see that the breaking is coming. Nothing lasts forever and I’m sensing, by the depth of the hurt in his voice, that he really can’t bend much more. God will come. And the break will be a relief. A true break.

What is that they say? It is darkest right before the dawn? I’ve never been one for all-nighters or early mornings, so I don’t know if that is true. But I think it must be.

And then there’s me. I see the place in my heart that is bending. The tension feels high. The emotions [hi, my name is Annie and I am never-no-not-ever short on emotions] are running high. The unknown of the break is looming.

I fear it. I can see it in her move to New York, I can see it in his sadness, and I am full of hope for them both. But this bend in my life is terrifying. The break is soon, I just don’t know what it will look like.

My journal is full of the bend. The ears of my friends are full of bend talk. But none of it compares to what the Lord has had to deal with- I like to talk things out and bless His heart, He can’t get away from me.

But there is something really safe and Him being the Bender, the Breaker, and the One who loves me through it.

*FYI- some details about my friends have been changed. Because, well, they are my friends.*

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