When Breaking Up is For the Best

What I wanted was a marriage proposal. What I got was a lunch break breakup.

After work that day, I sat in the chapel at a parish I pass a lot and asked the Lord a question: "What gives?"

He answered, via the verse I saw when I opened a Catholic app on my phone—John 13:7.

“What I am doing you do not know now, but afterward you will understand.”

And He was right. I get it now.

Sometimes, breaking up is for the best.

It's for the best when it's for the good of the body of Christ.

A couple nights after the breakup, I sat in bed with a pen and a book by Fulton Sheen, Our Grounds for Hope. A paragraph on page 16 stood out, so I underlined it:

You are not alone! You are on a team!

Hurt, they carry you to the sidelines.

"Why should this happen to me?" you ask --

Forgetful that you helped the team to win.

No suffering is wasted!

Not even mine. Not even his. Not even yours.

How often in the wake of a breakup do we have pity on ourselves? "On paper, we were the perfect couple," you say. "We could've worked through it." "Our kids would've been cute." "Why should this happen to me?"

Perhaps it should happen to you because God knows something you don't—such as that your breakup will be the catalyst that propels your ex toward growth in holiness, toward the pursuit of his true vocation. Perhaps this, "happening to you," is you, takin' one for the team—accepting a personal setback for the sake of the strength of the body of Christ.

It's best when it's for the good of the person who dumped you.

On my way home from work a few nights after the breakup, I scanned stations on the radio. I stopped on a Christian station to listen to the rest of one of my favorite worship songs: Good, Good Father.

I've heard it a thousand times but I laughed and cried when Chris Tomlin sang these lines:

Oh, it's love so undeniable, I, I can hardly speak.

Peace so unexplainable, I, I can hardly think.

As you call me deeper still

As you call me deeper still

As you call me deeper still

into love, love, love.

I laughed and I cried because what I realized moved me: love isn't supposed to end with your relationship. It's supposed to deepen after the breakup. We—ideally—love each other while we date, yes, but when we break up, we fall (or sometimes are thrown) into love's depths.

Depths we don't even think of when we decide to love a person.

And depths are dark.

They're also quiet, and if you listen, you might hear Him ask: "How far into love are you willing to go? Will you only love this man so far as he meets your needs, or will you go deeper still—to wherever I need you to be, including not in his life, so that I, the Creator, can maximize his holiness?"

And breaking up is for the best, too, when it's for your own good.

When the lunch break breakup stopped feeling fresh, my prayers got bolder.

"I'm ready (to become a wife). When will You be (ready to let me)?!"

He answered, like a dad who's planning a surprise for a daughter who thinks he isn't even thinking of her: "I wanted to arrange this for you."

I had stepped on His toes. I'd attempted to micromanage. I assumed He needed my direction, like a teen who ardently tries to convince her dad to buy her a car, and he stifles laughs the entire time, because of what she doesn't know: he already bought her one. He just hasn't given it to her yet.

God's like that—He knows what you want, but He also knows what you're for, and what's good for you. He knows who you're for, if you're called to marriage. He knows when and how and where it all should become clear to you. And He delights in revealing it to you.

So grieve after a breakup, yes, and tell God what you desire.

But in the process, consider: what you don't get isn't for you, and what you don't have yet isn't ready.

And that's ok, because our faith begets hope. And hope promises this: one day, you'll look back, able to say that the wait and the breakups were for the best.