Healing a Broken Heart (part 1)

 A broken heart is a terrible, and I mean TERRIBLE, thing to experience. However, to be honest it is one of the best things that has ever happened to me when I look at it from a spiritual standpoint. Some of what I say in this post will not be what most people will want to hear, but the process of making it through the grieving and spirit-breaking that I experienced have shaped me into who I am now. So, bear with me as I share with you my grueling and painful experience, and the lessons I have learned.

As a young kid I rarely attended Sunday school or church with a mindset of actually learning who God is, but rather a mindset of how many prizes I could earn for memorizing this or that, or attending every Sunday and getting perfect attendance. Halfway through junior high my focus switched some and I wanted to learn more, but nothing really made me want to dig into things like I hoped. Nothing made sense to me and I didn't want to admit to those around me that the Confirmation class I attended went over my head and I didn't have any interest in it. Regardless, I went along with it, and became a member of my church, said the words of accepting Christ,  and all that went along with it. Honestly, I don't know what all I agreed to that day, and to this day I wonder what I have made promises because I was too afraid to say I didn't want to partake. After this I genuinely started attending both Sunday school and church out of my own interest and desire rather than because I felt I had to. I attended Sunday school, church, high school youth group, and helped lead the junior high youth group as well. I'm sure you're wondering why I mention all of this when it comes to getting through a broken heart. Well stick with me. In this time I partook in at least 6 different sex and dating lessons that were taught for both the junior high and high school groups. While I believe they were well-intentioned discussions, they lost their effect on me in explaining how to properly address a relationship when it would occur, as well as how painful certain mistakes would be to make that would shake anyone who has a heart for Christ (probably any person with emotions, truly) to the very core of their being. I so wish there were a way to better teach and explain the pain that comes from not holding these ideas to be the best for our lives. If at some point the Spirit reveals to me a way to minister in this area, I will definitely jump on it, but that time has not yet come where I feel I can clearly and effectively convey those lessons to those that need to hear it. No one explains any of the following: How to approach a relationship when you aren't sure how it should be modeled in your own life. Or how to approach it when you don't feel the relationships you have seen aren't healthy or accurate representations of what you expect a relationship to be. How to distinguish between making exceptions to your desires in a relationship and understanding that not everything you hoped for is something that has to exist in your relationship. Being realistic (making rational exceptions to a relationship while not compromising your standards at the same time.) How to recognize that a relationship isn't always the best choice. The Spirit shattering nature of losing yourself to someone that decides they no longer love you. The pain, both physical and emotional, that comes with losing someone you thought would be your forever.  The process of being at war with yourself because sometimes your heart and your spirit are in distinctly different places of understanding. How to deal with family that means well with their words, but really all they're doing is breaking your heart worse with things you don't need or want to hear quite yet. How to protect your heart after the breakup and keep yourself from destroying your relationship with yourself, God, and those around you. How weak you'll feel in every aspect of your life because you've trusted someone with the most precious part of yourself and you just don't have the energy to fight back against Satan sometimes. In all of these things you don't think specifically of how you could be growing or hurting yourself. Thankfully I knew my heart would need protecting in the time that I felt the most weak and wouldn't be able to prevent myself from breaking God's heart with my actions. I prayed God would protect my heart from any of my poor decisions I would make in those moments (which He has graciously done). But I look at this experience and I had the hardest time understanding why after all of my patient waiting and praying why God would allow such pain to pass over me. Then one day when I felt my worst I had this stillness come over me... Not out of being ok with where I was at, but from hearing God's voice. He spoke to my heart. The pain of unrequited love is a heavy weight to bear even if the relationship only lasted 6 months. The pain I felt from this experience was nothing compared to the amount of unrequited love God receives every second of every day.  The pain I felt of the war between my flesh and my spirit was nothing compared to how much pain God could experience at any point in time as a result of any number of his children not acknowledging the love He shares with them. In experiencing a broken heart of this nature I looked everywhere for answers. The internet, my friends, prayers, everything I could possibly think of to help me understand how I messed up so much. I can't regret any of my past. If I did I wouldn't be forgiving myself and I wouldn't be accepting forgiveness from my Father. That was my biggest hurdle in figuring out how to find my new normal. I would forgive one portion of what had happened and then come back a few days later and still be caught up in it. I was grieving. Not just a small "boohoo" kind of grieving but a spirit-moaning deep genuine mourning for what I had experienced. My heart felt like it had an anaconda gripping it for weeks on end, my body ached as though I was experiencing the flu tenfold and it was never going to end. My eyes felt as though they had been pumped full of fluids and then glass had been placed under my eyelids to scrape my eyeballs. I had never in my life experienced something so horrible in my life.  Even when I felt I wanted my life to end many years ago, nothing could ever compare to the core-shattering pain I felt with this breakup. I awoke everyday praying for a hardening and understanding in my heart. In asking this I found the book "Is God Saying He's the One?" by Susan Rohrer. While I don't think this got me over the heart issues fully, I do believe it helped bring me understanding of what happened. The biggest and most helpful thing I gained from reading this book would have to be the fact that free will is just that... Free will. My free will is never forced, just as in the same way the person I may be interested in is never forced in his free will. No matter how much my idea lines up with God's desires, if the other person does not have the same belief He will not force it just because I beg Him to do so. That would lead to a bad situation all around in the long run when you truly consider the consequences of trying to force love on someone.  The 2nd most helpful thing from this book had to be the grieving process that was addressed.  "There's no getting around the loss it can be to experience unrequited love. No matter the form a breakup takes - whether or not a man ever shared a woman's affections - it's grief, plain and simple. No doubt about it, when a woman invests her heart in a relationship with a man who does not see her the same way, it can be devastating. How great a loss it is depends upon how much and how long she's banked on this particular hope. It really can be a kind of grief that must be weathered, and grieving takes time. Some might balk at comparing the loss of a man who never returned the woman's affections to physical death. I hear you. It can be undeniably excruciating to mourn the loss of a loved one who will never return. But the same permanence that makes death so very difficult to accept also assists in the grieving process by offering a certain point of closure. As painful as the physically deceased are to mourn, closure has its benefits. It helps us to move on to know there's no chance for reversal. Admittedly, it can be infinitely more difficult to weather the loss of an actual spouse. But grieving the loss of an unrequited love does carry its own particular challenge, in that the man a woman has set her hopes on it still physically alive and able to choose her, and yet he does not. This sends her into a perhaps lesser form of grief but it is grief, nonetheless. Mourning begins on a soul level." Look for part 2 here.