Kimberly Novosel Quotes

But I tended not to date men who ever showed up for me.

I wrote. I wrote all the things I couldn't say to him. I wrote about how much I believed in us. I wrote about how much I trusted God. I wrote that I was praying for him. I wrote down all the jokes I could remember, which weren't many.

Each guy stamped the passport of my heart. "You're worthy." Stamp. "You're enough." "You have not failed completely." Stamp, stamp.

I tucked the Camel coupon from his cigarette pack into my pocket. A souvenir of the moment where he said maybe. I would hold on to his maybe for as long as it would take, even forever.

I thought about how the past can become so small. An entire day, 24 separate, heavy hours, becomes the size of a tiny brown leaf falling from a tree. Before you know it, a whole year is just a pile of dead leaves on the ground. The year or so I'd spent in love with Chad was starting to feel so long ago, swept away by the wind. I knew that this year would soon feel far away too.

That's how it felt – that the loss of him had a life of its own. I lived with it as I could have lived with him. Some nights it was quiet and sometimes it pounded on my door.

We had so much to say to each other, like we'd been quiet our whole lives until we met. It was as if I had underestimated how hungry I was for a companion, how much I needed to be understood, to be pursued, to be seen and to be reflected in someone's eyes.

I threw his framed picture off my balcony just to hear my heart break.

Unfortunately, he still hadn't asked for my number, or a date, or my hand in marriage, and my drink was getting low.

I decided I would fill the emptiness in me with God and with paint.

We kissed each other until we were too tired to keep going. I could still feel him holding back. It was my penance for what I had done to him. All I could do was hope the walls would fall and that I could have all of him again, but I was always leaving and he was tired of watching me walk away. We both knew that I couldn't stay and that he couldn't come with me, but still, we couldn't let go.

I was girly and friendly and my family life was happy but many days I felt like I was on the inside what Chase was on the outside. I always believed I was a happy person with a sad soul. I felt like I had had tragedy in my life when I hadn't. Somehow, without having experienced what he had, his scars resonated with me.

I didn't answer. We were not buddies. We could not chat about the proximity of our offices, or football, or forgiveness.

The voice sang on, "I am ready, I am ready, I am fine. I am fine, I am fine, I am fine." I played it again. I was not fine.

I remembered learning from my favorite professor at Belmont to "surround yourself with people who are better than you," and I was now living that mantra.

I told him I had once lost everything I had, too, and that I think that can be God's way of building walls around us to force us to look up at Him.