I don't know about you, but I tend to find my thoughts trailing off fairly often.
It usually starts by me thinking about everything that I have to do for that day or week and then somehow I end up reflecting on my entire life.
This sort of thing happened to me the other day, and I began to reflect on my past year.
I thought about all the changes that have occurred in the past year alone: new college, new friends, new state, new major.
I realized that I've encountered quite a bit of change.
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As my thoughts continued to venture through my past year, I began to focus on the people in my life; more specifically, I thought about all the people I thought would be in my life forever that have walked out of it.
It doesn't matter if they are friends, boy/girlfriends, family members, or loved ones, when someone that you care about walks out of your life for whatever reason, it's painful all the same.
I've heard it said that there are relationships God places in your life that are seasonal, and then there are those that last forever.
As I've gotten older, I've learned that there are a couple of reasons as to why God places seasonal people in your life.
Now, there are some reasons that God does what He does that we just cannot understand.
But we know that sometimes God places people in your life to teach you lessons for the season that you are walking in.
I can recall several relationships where I was devastated when they ended, but ultimately I learned and grew so much from them that helped shape me into the person that I am today.
We also know that God will place seasonal relationships in your life for you to teach them.
He will use you to speak to them just as He uses others to speak to you in specific seasons.
God will also remove certain people from your life if you become too dependent upon them.
He wants to be our main focus and the center of our lives, but we don't always give Him that position.
It isn't always the easiest thing to do.
When I first transferred schools, I didn't know anyone.
I was in a completely new state with new people and had just had the one relationship that I felt secure in taken from me.
I can remember feeling so alone and so abandoned that I literally said, "Well, it's just me and you, God."
Have you ever been at that point?
Where you just felt so alone that the only thing that you felt you had left was your relationship with God?
It's a difficult place to be in, but as hard as it was, looking back now, it's not necessarily a bad place to be in.
God will use and remove people from our lives so that we remember He is the one that can bring us out of the storms and trials that we face.
People are imperfect and constantly changing, but God never is.
He wants to remind us that He is always there for us, even when it seems as though we have nothing left.
When all of this happened, I felt completely alone and as though nothing was going right, but in recognizing that God will never change His mind about me nor leave me, He was able to bring me out of that "storm".
Through having people removed from my life, I was able to grow closer to God than I had ever been before, and I learned how to depend more on Him instead of my loved ones.
So how do we overcome when loved ones walk out on us or relationships that we thought would last forever end?
No matter what, continue to walk with the Lord.
The Bible says that God will heal the brokenhearted and that He works all things together for the good of His people.
Lean on Him when you are feeling rejected or abandoned and don't let a relationship ending diminish your worth.
Don't be consumed with disappointment, hurt, and pain, but instead, know that God promises to finish the work in which He has started in your life and that there is a reason that relationship ended.
There is a quote from Dr. Seuss that says, "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
I believe that this is a great way to handle those situations when someone walks out of our lives.
So, the next time God removes someone from your life, don't get bogged down by the hurt and pain, but instead, recognize that God knows what is best for you and continue to walk with and trust in Him.
