the nature of a broken heart

I’ve neglected this blog for so long that I doubt anyone will even check it to see if I’ve written anything new.  It doesn’t really matter I suppose.  What else am I going to do on a Wednesday night when I’m feeling pensive and melancholy?  Catch up on reading for accounting?  Not so much. 

Being a rather morbid and melodramatic person, I’ve always considered what it would feel like to break my heart.  It turns out that I can feel the fractures.  Splinters dig into various other organs throughout the day.  Sometimes I wonder if they will pierce the skin.  I find myself observing my symptoms with a doctor’s cold detachment.  It doesn’t surprise me that I can no longer listen to certain songs on the radio without a painful, throbbing reminder of my illness.  The fact that I feel as if I’m bleeding internally and it could, should kill me at any moment doesn’t phase me.  There are some symptoms that I expected along with a few that surprise me.  I had an idea that I would lose sleep and feel nauseous.  The amnesia, however, is startling.  To forget how I came to be at a place, or to go to the grocery store and then forget what I came for is making me appear senile.  I have repeatedly sat down to read a book, only to find after a time that I have been making my eyes scan the pages for a time without taking in the meaning of a single word.  Heart break is full of surprises.  

There are so many “church words” that have ceased to have a meaning from overuse.  They have instead become cliches used in any offhand way, instead of standing for the beautiful ideas they were created to represent.  For instance, take the word “fulfill.”  Webster says that it means “to make full.”   Thank you Webster for the awesome insight.  How does that tiny definition encompass all that it means when it says in Psalm 138:8 that “The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me”?  God is taking my painful circumstances and using them to develop the full potential of the plans that he made for me before time began.  

Webster also takes power away from the word “sustain” when assigns the definition “to give support to.”  Paul assures the Corinthians in his first letter to the Christians there, saying that the Lord Jesus Christ will “sustain you to the end.”  What a weak assurance that would be if we took poor Webster’s definition into account.  Paul is telling the people of Corinth that there is a man who will meet every one of our needs, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, remaining faithful forever.

God is not merely putting me through the refining fire.  He made the fire and He is making the journey with me.  I know that when I emerge on the other side (and I know I will emerge because there is a cure for even a broken heart) I will be the better for it because I will not have to depend on anything else in this life other than the love of Christ to fulfill or sustain me.  

My heart hurts a little less already.