With a Broken Heart

Everything that I wrote about in the last post, I learned through suffering and pain. So it seemed only fitting that this be the theme of my next post. 

One day, I was sitting in prayer at one of the lowest points in my life that I can remember. I was experiencing pain like I never had before. It was like life had stabbed my heart so many times it had deflated into a little gimpy piece of plastic that throbbed and writhed around inside of me. So many people have felt like that, but the crazy thing is, the devil had convinced me that I was the only one; that I was alone. That is simply a lie. As I sat in the chapel praying, I just cried. I knew Jesus was sitting there with me, holding me in His strong arms and stroking my hair, but my faith is weak and I longed to see Him. I had to know He was still there, because it sure didn’t feel like it. How could He be there with all of this happening to me? I begged Him to show me His face, even if it was just for a second. He gently responded by reminding me of a quote that I had once read that said “to suffer is to see the face of God.” I didn’t know what that meant until later on that night, when I got a call with even worse news, that broke my heart even more.

There are many different kinds of pain. The most bearable kind is physical pain, afflictions of our outer body.  But what about when the pain you feel isn’t physical? What about when you’re so inflicted with sad emotions and feelings of abandonment that we refer to it as a “heart break”? That pain is much more somber. You can’t just ignore it like a pinch in your side. It has to be dealt with; ignoring it only delays the process. There are no pills for heartache. So, here comes the age-old question: how do you get through it?

When faced with emotional pain, whether it’s because of our own sin or because of an outside circumstance, most of the time our knee-jerk reaction is to shake our fists and frantically, desperately search for how to make it stop.So why doesn’t anyone know how to make it stop or how to fix a broken heart? There are things we can do to distract us from it or think more positively about it, but at the end of the day, nothing human can stop Pain’s gnawing in the deepest part of our souls. The more we push it down or try to ignore it, the stronger it seems to grow. As a fellow victim in the brutal warfare of heartbreak, I too asked this question. I was desperate to find the solution, angry I couldn’t, and finally completely hopeless. But I, like so many other people, was asking the wrong question. I was looking at pain and suffering the wrong way.

We must embrace pain. Yes, embrace suffering. Give it a hug and welcome it into the home of your heart. This sounds crazy and counter-cultural, but what else could you expect as a follower of Christ? Suffering shapes us and refines us, like a jewel stuck in the fire. It is not an excuse to lash out at people or to sin. It is not a license to sin, but the opposite. How you behave when your very soul aches is the true test of a person. That is when we are called to look different from the world. When you are hurting, make an even bigger effort to love your neighbor, to serve the poor, to pray, to be disciplined. The longer you sit around and mope or try to numb the pain with various people or substances, the longer the pain stays with you. It will not leave until you have learned what you are supposed to from it. And praise God for the chance to be refined!

That night that I mentioned earlier, when I thought things couldn’t get worse and they did, it hit me. Jesus was showing me His face. I was suffering in a more real way than I ever had because that’s how much God loved me and desired intimacy with me. He was exposing my idols and tearing them out of my cold, stiff fingers. The pain made me bury my head in His chest so deeply that I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t escape. It is abiding in Him in a deeper way than I could have conceived. He turned my mourning into dancing, but not because I no longer hurt or cried or because He snapped his fingers and made my life perfect. I rejoice because every time I hurt I get to share in my Lord’s sufferings. When I hurt because I’m rejected or betrayed, I get to feel a tiny version of the pain that He felt on Calvary, the pain that He feels when I run to other gods instead of to my King. So any pain you and I feel is a cause to rejoice because we can comprehend a little bit more the depth of God’s incomprehensible love. 

Suffering is for our good, if we accept it and embrace it rather than feel sorry for ourselves, ignore it, or try to numb it with things of this world. If our Master came to the earth to suffer in the most profound way, why should we, the servants, expect anything different? Every time hardship comes, and your heart hurts so badly that you want to scream, offer it up to Jesus. Thank Him for it. Ask Him to use it to purify you. Thank Him that He loves you so much He would allow you to experience pain. You might feel like you can’t do it anymore, like you cannot possibly bear your cross for one more second. The thing is, you and I can’t. But God can. Give your burden to Him and let Him give you the strength to bear it. As followers of God, we don’t have the right to give up.

He might not take our suffering away for a while, but He will never leave you. He will catch every teardrop and He longs for you to let Him just hold you as you cry. He will give you the strength to endure it if you only ask for it. “No trial has come to you but what is human. God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength…” (1 Cor. 10:13). And when you are tempted to feel alone in your pain, like no one knows what it’s like, no one understands, no one can make you feel better, remember that to some degree you’re right, no human will probably completely understand. But that is one of the devil’s sharpest weapons: to make you feel alone. Other people have pain, some that is buried so deeply no one would ever know it. Go find those people and comfort them. Be vulnerable about your own pain, so that they too can know that they are not alone. But above all, remember, Jesus knows what every kind of pain feels like and understands it more than we can imagine. Rejection, abandonment, humiliation, and being misunderstood are nothing new to Him. He even understands the pain of a loved one’s death or separation; He wept when His friend Lazarus died knowing full well He would soon resurrect Him. Life is painful and He understands that more than anyone else. Meditate on His life and Passion. You are never alone.

If you don’t have pain in your life now, there are still little grievances that we can offer up for our own sanctification. Every “first world problem”, every hurtful little comment directed at you, every time someone or something let’s you down or doesn’t go according to plan, we can offer it up to God and thank Him for it. He can use anything from the smallest discomfort to the biggest heartache caused by our own sin to sanctify us. What an amazing God we have.

Mother Teresa, in one of my favorite books No Greater Love, puts the key to joy amidst suffering far better than I could: “Don’t be afraid. There must be the cross, there must be suffering, a clear sign that Jesus has drawn you so close to His heart that He can share His suffering with you. Without God we can spread only pain and suffering around us. We all long for heaven where God is, but we have it in our power to be with Him right now, to be happy with Him at this very moment. But being happy with Him now means loving like He loves, helping as He helps, giving as He gives, serving as He serves, rescuing as He rescues, being with Him 24 hours a day, touching Him in His distressing disguise. Jesus is going to do great things with you if you let Him, and if you don’t try to interfere with Him.”