Dear hurting heart,

I don’t know where you find yourself as you read this, but I know grief and heartache can feel completely consuming. It can make you emotionally and physically ill. It can feel like you are drowning in a sea of darkness.

The thing about heartbreak that’s so strange is that the world around you keeps spinning, although your world feels frozen. When you look around, you wonder how the sun keeps coming up in the morning, and how people keep going. The pain inside you feels so big you wonder how it hasn’t poured out into the world and on everyone else.

The thing about heartbreak that’s so difficult is that most won’t understand it, because they aren’t you. So on top of feeling heartbroken, you might feel lonely, too.

The truth is, suffering and heartache are a normal part of the human experience. If you live long enough, you will feel these things.

But when you are actually walking in it, when you are firsthand feeling devastation, it’s hard to believe anyone has ever felt that way. It’s certainly hard to label it as “a normal human experience”.

I will never tell you, sweet soul, that, “It’s not so bad,” or that, “There is a bright side,” or that, “Everything happens for a reason.” I won’t tell you that this is what God wanted for your life.

Because that’s not helpful and I also don’t believe it’s true.

I don’t know why we have to suffer but I know it’s a guarantee for this life. I also know that we have a God who suffers with us. We have a God who sits in our emotions with us, a God who weeps with us. We have a God who is so near to the broken-hearted. He is closer to us than we are to ourselves.

We also have a God who works for our good. He can take the broken, the ashes and transform them into beauty, into wholeness.

So although I don’t believe God Himself put this heartache in your life, I know He can work through it, if you let Him.

I know it’s easier said than done, but even in the hardest of seasons, there is something to be found. Maybe you can’t see it right now, but you will.

And I hope you remember that this IS a season. It might have a lasting impact on your whole life, but it won’t always feel like it does right now.

There will come a day it doesn’t hurt as bad. Where you can see a little more clearly. Where smiling feels more natural. And where the heartache doesn’t feel like a knife wound.

It will come.

But for now, it’s OK to grieve. Let yourself do that. You can grieve and simultaneously have hope and faith in God and in a better future.

You can do both.

And you don’t have to do any of it alone. You aren’t the one who will heal you anyway. Go to Him. Even if you’re angry, even if you’re questioning Him, He can handle it. Go to Him.

Because, “He is close to the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds.” -Psalms 147:3

 

Originally published on The Unraveling

 

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