The Broken Heart

We talk, muse, sing about the beautiful, the lovely pieces of the past, the transcendent. Sitting in church this morning, we heard sweet music, good and sound words, hopeful and true. But even as we ponder the higher, nobler things, we all know heartbreak.

The first love that breaks our soul into pieces, making the world the most unlovely place...the feeling that we will never, ever love again or that life is not worth living anymore. That feeling, right there in our youth, repeats itself all along the way... 

The death of a marriage.

The death of a child.

The disease that destroys a loved one.

The betrayal of a dear friend.

A job that disintegrates into thin air.

Money that takes wings into the night.

The child who jumps ship.

The daughter who lies and won't stop.

The body who loses its strength and cannot get it back.

The ravaging of time that refuses to slow down.

One in the pew experiences unbelievable loss, yet seems resilient. Another has had someone barely slight them, yet it reams out their soul. Some are sensitive, some are stalwart, and then there are those who seem strong but are dying inside with unbearable pain that we cannot see. We all come with our varying temperaments, unique in design and rife with both fatal flaws and promise.

But today, I viscerally felt the heartbreak of so many, the depths of pain that we all encounter somewhere along our way. We all suffer, somewhere, sometime, none spared but not all the same. Today, in my Sunday quiet musing, the hearts breaking and the twin sound of freedom were ringing in my mind. We are bowed down by our imperfections, our mistakes and sins, our resistance to what we ought to do, and the truth of limitations (whatever they might be). 

I am currently reading a book about the wrestling match that is unique to a creative person. This author is laying out the problem of resistance that even the non-creative soul encounters. We all fight gravity, in all its forms. The siren call of the temptation to laze, to wait, to put off, is in everyone. But this writer also talks a lot about freedom, of how to find it by overcoming resistance. His answers to that are nothing that I have found to be true. He believes that to be free, we must outstrip any connection to any form of God. He says that God or obeisance to a Creator makes us slaves and hinders our creativeness. He only sees darkly... for the truth is that the Creative One, who masterminded this exquisite universe, is the One who frees the imperfect ones with perfect love. 

Maybe you can't know that unless you've walked in it, been truly freed by it. The vacuum in the broken heart with an unfillable hole in it, is finally filled.