“Your day breaks, your mind aches. There will be times when all the things she said will fill your head- you won’t forget her. And in her eyes you see nothing, no sign of love behind the tears, cried for no one. A love that should have last years.” –The Beatles, “For No One”

That pretty much sums up how the past few days have been going for me. I’m sorry that I’m only writing about the breakup over the past three days, but this is easily the most emotionally traumatic thing I’ve had to deal with in my life. I’ve never loved someone anything near as much as I did Aftan. Our relationship lasted a year and five months…and I messed it up somewhere along the way.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you will know that in previous entries I have bared my thoughts and feelings on many topics for you to read. I’ve shared how hard it was for me during my time in Iraq, how I was trying to deal with the hardships at Lakeside Church, and my excitement over moving to Oregon.

My life has taken a huge step in a different direction within the past four days. On Thursday, a relationship into which I threw every ounce of confidence I had, ended. It’s been really tough for me and I have had to be transparent to each one of my friends I’ve talked to over the past few days.

Consider this the 9/11 of my life. Something so profound and so terrible for me emotionally that I am just now after three days beginning what to think and move toward recovery. Yet it’s a turning point, whether it be good or bad — the future is uncertain.

I think right now I’m at the lowest point in my life. The breakup couldn’t have come at a worse possible time, but over just the past day I’ve been enlightened as to why the relationship had to come to an end. God gave me yet another dream and it included specific references and allusions to what has transpired in my life.

I had a dream last night in which I lived in a dorm and my room was burned to the ground, but all the others around it were perfectly intact. I escaped with my wallet, keys, and clothes on my back, and didn’t know what to do next. My old pastor, Pat Dillon, came up to me and promptly read me a Bible verse, and he said “Psalm 127:1. If God doesn’t build the house, they that build it are doing it for nothing.” Then he turned to me and said “You gave God most of it and held some of it back for yourself, he gave you a gift and you didn’t dedicate it to him fully.” Then my dad came up to me in the dream, handed me blueprints for a building and said, “Let’s get to work. You can’t do this yourself — it’s going to take a team to help you out.” Before I woke up, Pat came back to me and said “Chris, expand your horizons.”

That was pretty much it, and it has weighed heavy on me throughout the day. Of course the dream was a spiritual allusion to what I had done wrong on my part in the relationship. I was sharing with Rainier Camina and Cris Birch tonight how the Lord had shown me through that dream that the Lord had given me Aftan as a gift and expected me to dedicate our relationship to him. I hadn’t dedicated the relationship in full to Him and as a result he stopped blessing it. The Lord will not bless something he doesn’t have complete control over.

I am positive if I had truly given everything over to the Lord, I would have been much more easy-going instead of adopting hard-line stances on small issues that ended up turning out to be monsters. He would have directed my path, and if I would have followed the instruction given in the dream and expanded my horizons, we wouldn’t be in the place where we are today.

Hindsight is always 20/20, especially when the Lord shows you something and it kinda smacks you right in the face. Knowing exactly what I did to accelerate the chain of events that led to the breakup helps somewhat in the healing process, but the pain is still fresh. Rainier and Cris prayed with me tonight and I don’t think I have ever cried like I did in Rainier’s living room tonight. But it was a prayer I needed to pray and lift the weight of the world off my back…and I also praised God through it even though it was the toughest possible thing I could say. God is good no matter what circumstances happen in my life.

Continue to pray for Aftan and I, as individuals, that we may continue to find God’s will and what is best for our lives. I truly appreciate everything that everyone has done so far — you know who you are. God bless you.

I don’t know why but there have been three occasions within the past two or three years that I can remember, where I dreamed about something and it happened the very next day.

July 6, 2005, I dreamed that I was a passenger in the London Underground and they had to evacuate all the trains. On July 7, the famed London Tube bombings occurred, killing over thirty people.

April 15, 2007, I dreamed of my friend Adam Stevens. He is a Virginia Tech student, and in the dream he told me, “Pray for me. We’re in trouble.” I prayed and went back to sleep, and woke up to the news of 32 dead at VT in a senseless massacre.

April 25, 2007, I dreamed that my girlfriend Aftan had roomed with five guys and one of them was a good friend of hers that told me flat out, “She’s mine now.” Today, well, you can only guess what happened.

She doesn’t have another guy, and I believe her when she says it. She said she just needed a break from me for a little while, and I can actually somewhat understand it now, when I couldn’t earlier. She has a lot of stress on her life and maybe I was adding to it by wanting her around so much. It sucks that me wanting to spend time with her even though she had a full plate was misinterpreted as nagging her.

I loved her to death and I still do. I’m just now realizing that there were things we BOTH could have done better, a lot better. We’re both busy. School is stressing her out, my bills and apartment payments are stressing me out. The fact that we both don’t even get to see each other that often is a major contributor to it too, I am sure.

She asked me to just scale it back and be her best friend for the time being. It’s a request I am going to have to live with, and keep my head up while doing so. It’s really tough to going from being serious boyfriend and girlfriend, to even giving her a promise ring over Christmas, to now being out of a relationship completely.

I don’t want to mail it in and look for someone else. Instead, today I prayed and will continue to pray and think for God to give me another chance and this time I’ll do better to prove myself and we both can do better for each other.

I’m devastated right now. I moved all the way across the country on faith in a word from the Lord to pursue our relationship. Aftan Rehling is 75% of the reason I’m in Oregon right now. I even bought her a promise ring over Christmas as a word to be faithful to her and we would get married someday. I still hope and pray that happens. But today happens and then where do I go from here?

God let this happen for a reason and I can’t blame him. In fact I’m praying to Him and asking him for some serious answers and to show me and change my heart the way it needs to be changed, not just so I can “win her back” so to speak, but to be more loving and kind and show it.

And I also pray that the Lord gives her the confirmation she needs for herself right now.

For now I will have to settle with being her best friend during this time and even though it is tough for me I want to do it with pride and a good attitude, even though I’m tore up inside right now. I want to show her I still love her and am serious about continuing a relationship we had for one and a half years, and making an even greater effort and personal sacrifice to make sure it happens.

As for right now, this moment in time, it’s midnight and I don’t want to sleep. I am honestly terrified to death I will have another dream.

I’m mortified.

And my heart is broken, after last night’s dream came to pass.

Pray for me. I need peace….and guidance.

In just a bit I am heading out to downtown Portland. Instead of driving all the way there, I am going to park at the Washington County Fairgrounds MAX station and take the light rail into downtown. Then I’m going to walk around and take some photos. All for $4.50.

I’ll post some cool photos of downtown when I get back. Peace!

UPDATE 11:37 PM: I walked over five miles and took some pretty neat photos. Check them out on my MySpace profile or in my Photo & Video section.

I’m out of here, heading over to the Camina’s house to meet up with everyone and ride up to Kirkland, WA in the church van for Youth Convention tonight and tomorrow. I’ll be back tomorrow evening…Rainier is driving so pray for a safe trip.

I’ll be back with photos and video tomorrow.