The most difficult part of this process for me has been coming to grips with the fact that I have lost the only person on the planet that knew all of me. Everyone knows pieces of me. Erica the daughter. Erica the friend. Erica the employee. Erica the church member. It’s not like I change who I am depending on who I am with, but each social circle encounters a different part.

For example, only a very small group of people know that I served on a prophetic team when I lived in Nashville. A different small group of people knows that I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons weekly with friends for over a year now. And another knows about the time I spent a month in the Panamanian Jungle.  There are so many pieces of me and Jon was the only one who knew them all. In fact, there were many pieces that Jon alone knew.

(If you are reading this and know me, I’m sure you were surprised by at least one of those statements. And I’m pretty sure that at least one of the first two statements has made the majority of my Christian readers question the quality of my faith. If that’s the case it’s probably why you didn’t know about it before lol.)

It’s not just the big parts of me, it’s the little pieces of me that go unknown that hurt the most. It’s not having someone to share my little thoughts and feelings throughout the day. It’s not having someone to talk to when I pass a guy who was wearing the same cologne as Jon and it sets me back temporarily. Or just having someone to tell about my day before going to bed. Sometimes I’ll feel like I have something to say and look around and the words just die on my tongue.

I know in response to my sharing my feelings in this area I will get lots of offers of “if you ever need to talk..” And I have taken people up on that in the past. But the hard part is I don’t miss having someone to talk to occasionally, I have lots of good friends for that. I miss and want someone to talk to that is a part of my daily life. I can’t ask that of any of my friends. They might be fine with it at first, but they have their own lives to live which don’t include me. Eventually, I would become a chore and I don’t ever want to be seen as a burden to anyone.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this blog. I feel like I’m rambling, but this is where I’m at right now. These past few days I’ve been feeling the loss of intimacy in my life, of being known. Where do you put the secret parts of yourself when the place you used to keep them is gone forever?

Psalm 139
1 You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.