Embracing the Broken Heart

I had my heart break today. We were just sitting around the table talking and the pain flooded thru me. I wanted to run, I wanted to cover my head and make it all go away. I wanted to throw up my hands and shout, "Enough!" I wanted to push away the pain, try to hold it at arms length and examine it objectively finding ways to eliminate it.

After everyone had left and I was alone at the table loneliness birds circled around me laying stone eggs in my heart. Inadequacy, depression, and fear hatched and grew up quickly.

"God I can't do this! I don't know what to do," my whisper shouted across the empty room. I told myself that He could do it, that He could make things right, and was then quick to answer, "Then why doesn't He!?"

I wondered why I am here at this church. Why put me here if I can't do this? That doesn't make sense. That was the first positive statement I had made in the last passing minutes. It doesn't make sense, God wouldn't do that. Therefore, He must have brought me here 'cause He knew that I could do this, that He could use me to create change.

"Then why do I feel all these negative emotions? The doubt, depression, hurt, inadequacy?"

That is when things began to turn around for me. This pain is what Jesus feels. What broke my heart is what breaks His. I shouldn't be running away from it, rather I should embrace it. I quickly prayed that He wouldn't take it away, but that He would give me the hope to handle it.

Hope doesn't take away the pain and anxiety, if it did we wouldn't need it any more. Here I sit, broken, pained, but hopeful in a God beyond measure. I don't really know how but somehow this brokenness will heal into ministry.

Until then I sit here embracing the broken heart. Whispering:

"God, continue to break my heart with that which breaks yours..."