“Sometimes it’s the smallest things that bring back the biggest memories.”
“The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart and saves those that have a contrite spirit.”
– Psalm 34:18
“Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; and the end of that mirth is heaviness.”
– Proverbs 14:13
Heartache, heartbreak, grief, sorrow, betrayal; they all have two things in common, everybody will experience them and nobody asks to. It doesn’t matter how much you do ‘right’ or how much you try to avoid it, somehow those not so little menaces seem to find you.
The cold truth of the matter is that you will never fully understand grief until you cry at the sight of a toothbrush. You will never fully understand betrayal until you don’t know how to trust anyone anymore and you’ll never understand heartache until that sinking feeling in your chest keeps you awake at night.
However the even more cold and hard truth about these pains is that those who endure them don’t fully understand them either.
I find that the hardest factors of sorrow are not often the big and profoundly obvious things but more so the most small and not so insignificant things.
I stepped outside my home the other day and the cold crisp air (the first frost of the year) stung my throat. That sting sank into my chest and iced my lungs; it froze over my heart. It felt as if my chest cavity had been encased in a thin layer of ice. Though I am speaking metaphorically, my point is that I didn’t expect the temperature to have dropped so soon and it caught me off guard. Allow me to elaborate: the air didn’t make my heart ache because sit was cold, rather that it brought memory of a time my heart ached in a season of cold air.
It’s all the involuntary feelings; things you feel so strongly but wish so strongly you could rid.
I’m left with a lingering plea, crying, ” I didn’t ask for this!” or “I don’t want to feel this way!” I know how to barricade myself, I know how to guard myself and prepare myself for the big but expected hurts. However it’s the small and uninvited things that cut through our hard exterior. It’s the little knocks that remind me every so often of my heart’s weakness; feelings.
However this flesh of ours was designed to feel; it’s what you do with those feelings that determine if your heart freezes or thaws. This isn’t an article on how to move past grief, heartache, and all sorrow. A “quick-fix” to get glad now if you wish, no. This isn’t a list to tell you if you do this then do that, then you will escape the process of mourning and tears. This is a letter to those who are there.
There in the place that you feel you’ll never get out of.
I don’t know how long you will be here. Just know you are not alone here and there’s a word (s) to sustain your life here in your place of sorrow until you are placed somewhere else.
To top it all off, the most cold, hard fact in all this is:
Jesus is with you, He’s been with you, and He will always be with you. In place of grief and betrayal and loneliness, He is there.
“However this flesh of ours was designed to feel; it’s what you do with those feelings that determine if your heart freezes or thaws.”
Sometimes we walk through seasons where the air is cold and crisp and it hurts to breathe. Yes, there is joy to be found but– there is also hearts to be healed. Don’t bury your pain, deal with it; face it. Yes, you didn’t ask for this but you are still here.
In life we occasionally receive some things we didn’t ask for, it’s up to you how you deal with it. You can let that cold sting rest in your chest and freeze your heart solid and numb.. or you can let it thaw.
Jesus doesn’t ask you to rush through your grief and pain but He does say He’ll be there with you through it and if you wait on him you will renew your strength again [ Isaiah 40].
He gives us peace. [Phil. 4:7]
He gives us comfort. [2 Cor. 1:3-5]
He gives us a place to go. [Isaiah 25:4]
He gives us love. [Rom. 8:38-39]
He gives us companionship. [Prov. 18:24]
He gives us strength. [ Isaiah 40:31]
He goes through it with you. [Isaiah 43:2]
Yes, I know you didn’t ask to feel this pain but glory be, we have more to sustain us than feelings and that is, God’s sincere and most powerful truth. Be encouraged.