As a child, I remember hearing about someone dying from a
broken heart. I never actually believed it was true but thought it was the
Southern way of covering up some tragedy or disease that was inappropriate to
talk about. In my mind, the phrase kept their story sacred so that no one could
go prying around trying to figure out what really happened.
When I got older I fell in love with British literature, where it seemed no
story was complete without the tragedy of a broken heart. By
instinct, I rushed past these pages, still convincing myself that nothing that
radical could actually happen.
Or could it?
After saying goodbye twenty times to the girls over the past four
years as they made their way back to school in the Philippines and then to America,
I’ve learned that broken heartedness isn’t a cover up or imaginary, but a real
life condition. In fact, the Hebrew word Shabar means brokenhearted, crushed or
shattered.
It started with a
crack
Each time I watched the glass doors slide shut as the girls passed through
security a tiny crack formed in my heart until somehow, over the years, the fragile
lines began intersecting and expanding.
It was somewhere around the eighteenth flight at the beginning of last
summer that I felt something shifting in my heart as it began to fissure and
shatter. At that point I remembered all the stories I’d read and the times I’d
heard about what I thought was a made up condition, and knew from instinct that
I was experiencing what Jesus and many others called a broken heart.
My heart has undergone a painful transformation since then. It hurts, but
not in a heart attack kind of way, just a constant aching and longing to be near the girls -- the ones I played with
for hours on the floor, prayed over constantly and organized my days around. I
was motivated to do much of the mundane for their two beautiful smiles and
twinkling eyes, propelled into many unknowns for the sake of making their
future a little more bright and beautiful. Their lives were so joined with mine
that even thinking about a time when we wouldn’t be together was hard for me.
Though I hung on to hope for a while out of courage that our separation
would soon end and we’d all be back together again, reality began to set in as
Caroline left for Chapel Hill two summers ago and Sarah started her senior year,
which was her fourth at boarding school.
I began waking up in the morning to an immediate realization that
something inside was all splintered and messed up. At night I slipped into a
rhythm of wondering how I could move on from the pain of living so far away from
the ones I promised to take care of until they were grown.
Looking up from
the wreckage
When Sarah boarded her flight this Christmas to go back to school, I
robotically made my way to the car with Mark, where we began a silent trudge
back to what we declared as “nine more weeks without her.” As I was crying and
grieving over what felt like an unbearable goodbye, the Lord reminded me that He’s
not only my brother and savior and friend, but my doctor, my healer, who
promises to “bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted” (Is 61:1). He’s been
whispering to me through His Word that He’s perfect at restoring broken hearts,
and takes delight in healing the most cracked and shattered lives.
As I’m embracing His promises to heal, I’m going back to the places where
I’ve seen Him with others whose hearts were cracked wide open. I see him
embracing Martha and Mary with hope as they were despairing about their
brother’s death, standing beside a well in the sweltering heat to comfort a woman
who’d all but given up on life, turning around in a crowd just to find the
woman who’d touched his robe so he could heal her bleeding along with her
broken heart and spirit. I see Him looking down from the cross on his own mom’s
breaking heart and waiting for Peter on the shore after his resurrection, even cooking
a meal, so he could comfort him from shame and brokenness.
As I look at these stories together, I’m amazed at how I spend most my
life trying to avoid the people he intentionally intermingled with – the ones
he hunted down at noon or searched out in obscure places. Jesus had eyes to see
the broken hearted, ears to hear their language and a heart that pounded with
mercy not only to hear them but to heal them.
So, why would it be any different for me or you? How is it that I can
convince myself in my darkest moments of loss and depression that He doesn’t
care, that He’s not with me and that I’ve got to find a way to put the pieces
of my heart back together again?
The one who was broken in every way, crushed in Spirit and caused to
suffer for wrongs He didn’t commit understands broken hearts better than
anyone. Not only that, He promised that He came to heal them.
Logic has taken root somehow through God’s wisdom and revelation as I’ve
carefully assessed my situation. Yes, I’m brokenhearted and need healing. And,
yes, it’s going to take time. No, I cannot possibly do it by myself, and I know
from experience that no counselor on this earth can begin to reach inside my
heart and bring the kind of healing I need.
On the other hand, Christ is with me. He wants to bind up my wounds – the
most penetrating and excruciating of them. He knows exactly what to do, how to
do it and how long it will take. It’s not something He hopes to accomplish but
a healing He’s guaranteed.
Trusting Christ
for healing
As I kneeled praying and crying the other day, I kept asking God, “What is
it that you want me to do? How can I make this pain go away?” I thought through
all the things I’ve been doing like getting exercise and sleep, praying,
listening to music and sermons and inspiring stories, and how each of these is
only putting a band aid on an oozing sore. Then two words came to my mind in
the silence as I was waiting for an answer, “Trust me.”
It seems too easy or maybe too hard. Easy in the sense that I can put away
all my formulas and tactics to try to fix myself and hard in the sense that I
have to trust, to rely on, His willingness and ability to bring wholeness to
what seems like a hopelessly broken situation.
“Help me,” I whispered back. For His two words I had only two to say back,
but honestly I think more happened in
that simple conversation than had transpired in my long winded monologues with
him over the past six months about what’s wrong and how I can’t fix it and how
it’s eating me alive.
I know that the road to healing may be time intensive. I’ve missed four
years of my daughters’ high school lives, four years of sharing meals together,
of arguing over chores and laughing over silly things. We have snapshots of summers
and Christmases and fall and spring breaks, but they can never make up for the
long seasons we’ve been apart and the distance it’s created in our hearts.
As much as I want I can’t reverse time and do it all again. God had a good
plan in calling us to Korea and an even better plan to teach me how to love by
letting go and trusting Him with the most precious treasures I’ve ever dreamed
of holding in my hands. As I’m learning
to surrender them and my brokenness to
Him, I’m starting to see hope – that He’s going to make my heart whole again,
to seal and heal the cracks that seem unfixable and to restore joy to my life.
“If
Christ does not heal the broken-hearted, he will not fulfill the mission for
which he came from heaven. If the broken-hearted are not cheered by his
glorious life and the blessings that flow out of his death, then he will have
come to earth for nothing. This is the very errand on which the Lord of glory
left the bosom of the Father to be veiled in human clay, that he might heal the
broken in heart; and he will do it.
Jesus
Christ has gone on healing broken hearts for thousands of years, and he is well
up in the business. He understands it by experience, as well as by education.
He is "mighty to save." Consider him; consider him; and the Lord
grant you grace to come and trust him even now!” Spurgeon
