Beholding Christ After A Breakup

Photo: Roman Derrick Okello/Unsplash

Sometimes the person your heart breaks for is the person who breaks your heart!

Ask me,

See, sometime before I met Rhionah (I rarely tell her these bu stories meanwhile, so let’s keep this between us). Deal?

As a student at the university, I once toyed around with some girl’s heart and, like someone recently described, “kept giving vibes” but wasn’t opening my mouth to clarify things.

In those youthful days at campus, you got comfortable (even proud) with news going around that you were seeing or hanging out with somebody. Sometimes it came at a cost; you would be summoned to a table with “elders” to “clear rumors” or else stop spreading lies, but you would somehow continue.

Sometimes you would just enjoy “giving vibes” and get deeply hurt when the other person finally got into a serious relationship, not yours (turned out to be my case!). Ouch!

I recall towing my swirling head that evening to Nsibirwa Hall, where my friend Chris Amanyire temporarily shared a room with me. It must have been the darkest night of my bachelor days. I felt like my heart was pouring in the blanket; how could she? After all this long, I breathed venom. Only that it stayed in the blanket, and I breathed it in again!

That first night was long; I had been chucked without a word. I simply had spotted “them,” my crush and her other more serious guy, together in a Wandegeya restaurant, confirming my long-held suspicion. Now the safest place to flee was to my bed, under that blanket.

Roommate Chris knew nothing; I probably only spoke to him the next day. I needed a time to grieve, or rather, inwardly groan, alone.

Grieving is sometimes what guys and girls do; the question is how? At the time, faculty Internet cafes welcomed students exploring the internet—in its early years. Yes, I am that old. I was one of those. And now, maybe asking some questions online could help.

I needed counsel. I needed solid counsel, and I found it on a website called boundless.org, a little American website whose content I had to translate as balms for my romantic wounds. I am happy to say it helped. I slowly recovered.

What I got encouraged by, I don’t recall exactly, but at least I found community—sound Christian community—that told me I wasn’t the first to emotionally get hit in the chest and that God as my ultimate satisfaction was what my fragile post-adolescence years needed.

I would later survive that season and endure one more heartbreak (yikes!) before I finally met Rhionah, but the lesson had sank in: marriage was not my portion, the Lord is, and would be. Until my heart was satisfied in who God is for me, in Christ, I wasn’t ready to be anybody’s husband, even Rhionah’s.

I am pretty thankful my marriage began (at all) with a healthier post-mortem like that.

Which is why it excites me to know about Conscious Connections, another community of “boundless”-like Christian Ugandan marrieds near here who are excited about coming together to help young people date right, accountably, for the long haul. I learned what I hope every single person (soon marrying or not) should; nobody needs to “die alone” in a community of Christian wisdom, nobody.

Thanks be to God!

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Joan Beha
Joan Beha
15 days ago

Thanks be to God indeed! Thanks for sharing, Eddie. Maybe someday I can also put my own past heartbreak(s) and lessons in WORDS.yikes!

Last edited 15 days ago by Joan Beha
Faith Byanjeru
Faith Byanjeru
14 days ago

Thank you Brother, amd yes we won’t tell robinah…lol

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