I recently sat down with an old friend — someone I never expected to see again.
Years ago, during one of our first conversations, he shared something with me that I never fully understood at the time. For whatever reason, that moment stayed with me. This past weekend, after more than a decade apart, our paths crossed again.
Many of the people close to me know I’ve been learning how to grow in my relationship with Christ after experiencing heartbreak in a past relationship. Even now, while writing this, there is still a quiet ache that lingers in my heart.
Lately, I’ve found myself wrestling with a simple question:
Why is love so difficult to understand?
As we sat together, I opened up to him about the weight I had been carrying for quite some time. I spoke about disappointment, confusion, trust, and the emotional exhaustion that comes from giving someone access to the deepest parts of you, only to feel abandoned afterward.
He listened patiently.
There was no interruption. No judgment. No rush to respond.
Just understanding.
After I finished speaking, silence settled over the room for a moment. Then he looked out the window and asked me a question that immediately struck something deeper inside of me.
“Do you feel rejected?”
I paused before answering.
“Yes,” I told him. “I think I do.”
Not simply rejected by a person, but rejected in the areas where I allowed myself to become vulnerable. I had spent years building walls around pain, distrust, and disappointment. Trust was never something that came easily to me, and yet I had allowed someone to see the parts of myself I normally keep hidden.
The truth is, I realized I didn’t really know how to trust anyone at all.
He asked me why.
At first, I thought I understood the answer. But the longer I sat there, the more I realized the wound ran much deeper than I had ever admitted to myself.
Then he asked me another question.
“Do you know what love is?”
I sat there quietly, reflecting on my life, my relationships, and the experiences that shaped me.
And honestly, I realized I didn’t know.
That thought stayed with me.
How can someone genuinely love others if they don’t first understand what real love looks like?
Before we left, he encouraged me to spend time in the book of John — to read it carefully, meditate on it, and journal what stood out to me along the way.
As the conversation continued, he began opening up about parts of his own life that he had never shared with me before. The more we talked, the more I realized how similar certain parts of our journeys truly were.
What stood out most to me, however, was not only what he said, but the fact that he chose to stay and listen at all.
He did not owe me his time.
He did not owe me his vulnerability.
He did not owe me wisdom.
Yet he gave all three freely.
Later that evening, I sat alone in my car and began praying.
I asked my Heavenly Father to help me understand His love. I asked Him to teach me what trust truly looks like. And slowly, I began realizing something I had overlooked for a long time:
Even in seasons of confusion, grief, and heartbreak, God was still providing for me through people, conversations, and moments I could not explain on my own.
I had not seen this friend in over ten years.
Yet somehow, at the exact moment I needed clarity most, he was there.
That was not coincidence.
That was provision.
God knew the questions I had been carrying. He knew the sleepless nights, the quiet grief, and the moments spent wondering why certain relationships left such deep marks on my heart.
But He also reminded me of the people who had remained beside me through it all.
My parents.
My brother.
My grandmother, who continually guided me back toward Scripture whenever I felt lost.
And through all of this, I began realizing that love is far more than emotion alone.
Sometimes love looks like patience.
Sometimes it looks like presence.
Sometimes it looks like someone choosing to remain when leaving would be easier.
For a long time, I questioned why certain relationships caused so much pain in my life. I questioned why God would allow me to love deeply if loss was waiting on the other side of it.
Even this morning, I found myself asking Him the same question again.
Why allow that kind of heartbreak at all?
And then, quietly, a simple thought came to mind.
Women hurt too.
