The World According To Chris Brewer

“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.