A BROKEN HEART

Poets have written about it, songs have been composed as the results of it; hearts broken over broken relationships, death, suffering, misunderstandings and emotional pain on many levels. Everyone will experience these types of grief that we often refer to as, “heartbreak” at one time or another. For the most part, many of us will have our hearts broken many times throughout our lives by others as well as the wrong choices that we or someone dear to us makes yet, when it’s happening to you, it is so very easy to feel like no one else in the world has ever felt the same way… when you are in that moment. Sometimes, we even experience secondhand heartbreak that can be as devastating. For both are pretty common but are dealt with in much the same way.
Some people, with high expectations from themselves (that would be me) are prone to heartbreak. While others appear to have it all together but inside are falling apart. I know and have known parents who face heartbreak because of an irresponsible child causing an entire war-torn family to struggle with the pain of broken hearts. The word broken heart is a common metaphor used to describe the intense emotional pain or suffering one feels after losing a loved one, through death, divorce, breakup, moving, being rejected, or other means. At first, it seems nothing can help. With time soothing words can help to heal broken hearts and mend relationships. Kind words can help alleviate the pain that one feels during those extreme times of hurt, especially if administered in love and not judgment. Psalm 69:20 says …”Insults have broken my heart and left me weak, I looked for sympathy but there was none; I found no one to comfort me.” In this Psalm, David says that insults had broken his heart, not loss or pain. Whether insult or rejection like David felt as he sought friendship with Saul, just about anything can break a persons heart.

Even today I received an email from a precious friend who is agonizing over a child that has decided to go their own way now that she is old enough and is experiencing the freedom of being away at college and from the authority that she has lived under all her life. While it is one of the hardest things a parent will ever have to do….sometimes, we have to accept the fact that it may only be through their wrong decisions that they will find God and return….or as the prodigal son did…find out that home really is better than the far away country that they may be seeking right now in the oat field where they are sowing.

Upon her asking my advice because of my own experiences as a parent, I shared with her these things that has helped me in the past and still does through the heartache that I have experienced in raising a child that pursued the wayward country. It may sound too easy yet they are the very things that have sustained me in those times and as I said, still do. But through it all, the Lord constantly reminds me to love without condemnation….allowing God to convict and guide her heart just like He does mine. I must daily trust this to God and not try to be her or anyone’s Holy Spirit. My job as a parent to an adult now is to simply stand ready when they ask, and they will… being sure to give Godly advice not only by what I say, but how I myself am living. Because my actions are always going to speak louder than my words of wisdom. My release through the hard times has come through in three ways: my tears, my talking about it to the Lord, and through time …they have been the key factors that have helped me to endure my moments of heart break. For the pain….I have had to learn the stages of churning about it, over and over, burning about it, being angry at them and angry at God and angry at myself…. learning from it, finding God’s perspective on it and then turning from it, releasing it daily relinquishing it to God…. and that my friend, is where you get the victory.

Happiness will only return to replace a broken heart as we make the effort to fight against it and not let it overtake us. If you are experiencing heart ache today sweet friend may I encourage you to keep yourself busy with other things, don’t waste your time dwelling on the sadness that entangles you with your heartache and trying to figure out how you can change people or the situation. But allow God the time to do what He needs to do in every life involved.

As I shared with my friend, any great book or godly counsel that you find on this subject will ultimately encourage you to let go….and let God! While that may sound petty, it is the truth. Pain is brought on suddenly….but it always takes time to diminish, and that is okay. You must allow yourself time to grieve over your pain, but do not take it into a closet and hide there with it. Fight it! The more we dwell on it, the more we worry over it and the more discouraged we will make ourselves. We must meet every disappointment in our lives as God sees them, not as we do! For He has the eternal perspective and overall picture of the situation and not the tunnel view that we see in that moment.

Dear friend as you may have often times heard me say it is always worth repeating…pray for and encourage godly people to encounter your husbands, your wives and sons and your daughters as well as your grandchildren. Pray that every where they turn they will be encountered with Truth…because that is the only thing that will set them free and bring change to their world….love them and pray for them yes….but, be a godly example to them by your own lifestyle….don’t give up….don’t you dare give up on them! They need our unconditional love, grace and undeserved mercy! Remembering that we do too!

Loving you today!
Bren

IS YOUR PAIN WORTH THE LESSON

One summer day when I was a young girl, I had been playing in a nearby neighbor’s yard as I heard my mother call out for me to come home. With it being summertime I was of course barefooted. As I walked back home, I stepped on a board that had been piled up on a small mound of debris. As I stepped over one of the boards and as my foot came down onto another one, I felt something like a thorn going into the arch of my foot. As I looked down I saw not a thorn but a 2 inch nail. As my mind registered what had happened the pain began to rise from my foot and quickly went up my leg. I grabbed the top of my leg to try and stop the searing pain from moving farther and began to cry out for help. As the pain became intolerable throughout my entire body, I knew that I had to pull the nail that was attached to a board out of my foot in order to at least wobble and get myself home, because it had appeared that no one was coming to my rescue. As I looked down and saw that the nail was old, bent and kind of orange in color, I could only assume that the nail was rusty and that I was going to die an excruciating death. Once I got home and my mother treated me with medicine and compassion, within 24 hours I no longer had any pain or side effects. But I did however learn a very powerful lesson. Like most parents I had been told by my mother to never play on old piles of wood or debris, because of the possibility of rusty nails. Yet that morning in a hurry, I disregarded what I knew to be right. I ignored what she had repeatedly taught me. I had been both lazy and preoccupied and I paid a horrific price for it that day.

Disregarding what we know to be right, whether through laziness, preoccupation with other things or simply rebellion, always brings undesirable and spiritual damage and consequences. That pile of debris was a stumbling block to me, yet I was unwise to see it as such, because deep inside me was an irritation to do what I wanted to do and not what I had been warned not to do. No, the rusty nail did not end my young life, but it did threaten it and in the end brought a huge amount of discomfort caused from the extreme pain and distress to both me and my mother. Anytime we choose another path from the one we know to be right, as taught by our parents or the Word of God, it is like stepping onto a dirty old pile of nails and debris, barefooted. You never know what you may step on because often times you will not be able to see what is underneath your next step. When we act or seek to justify our lazy or rebellious choices for whatever reason we choose to make them, we will always end up hurting ourselves and effecting other as well. When we lie to ourselves by thinking that we are not really doing anything wrong, that it doesn’t really matter or perhaps even try and console ourselves with the thought that everyone else is doing it, or something even worse, we believe the lie that we will not be negatively affected by it. We somehow convince ourselves that we are the exception to the rule and therefore immune to the consequences of breaking it. Obedience must become our priority! Those who walk in obedience finds peace and rest. Those that rebel and walk in the flesh after having been warned, have only an eventual world wind to look forward to. But when obedience becomes our goal, it is no longer an irritation. Instead of a stumbling block, it becomes a building block that leads to true freedom. The more we obey revealed truth, the more we become liberated. So come, no run to the One who offers you a peace that the world knows not, and there you will find what you are looking for! Sometimes the truth can hurt. But if we learn from it, the pain is worth the lesson!

Do not be wise in your own eyes: Fear the Lord and turn from evil. Proverbs 3:7

Loving on you today,

Bren