heart heart heartbreak

I would be sad because you left me all alone.
I would be sad because the lies that you had told.
I would be sad because I got left by a girl that I adore.
I would be sad because the love I had before. - The Avett Brothers

Denial

I meant what I said when I said I would settle down with you

although I know it's not something that you were asking me to do.

And I know we are young but we won't always be, so marry me;

lets not be that predictable young couple changing, moving on.

Heartbreak.  Inevitable.  Undeniable.  Instrinsic.  There is no way to both breathe and avoid it in your life.  Yet we spend most of our days, our waking hours, our efforts and energy trying to distance ourselves from it.  Even the risk of having our hearts broken, the mere prospect, is so awful as to cause us to rearrange our lives, reconfigure our choices, to ensure we would never face such a sentence.  Still we fail.  It catches up to us all.  We don't deny its power, we deny it is an essential quality of life.

"My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me."

Christ's prayer spoken with His face in the dirt, alone in the Garden of Gethsemane looking for any way possible to remedy our sin.  Jesus in no way denied his fate.  He knew the pain he would endure, the torture that would be inflicted to mete out God's punishment.  He was willing to endure it.  For the joy set before Him, He did not waver.  It was the heartbreak that gave Him pause.  To suffer the pain that we had merited by our waywardness was a difficult task.  To face the heartbreak of His Father as He turned from the sin that weighed down on the back of Christ even as he clung to the cross, I have to imagine that was what brought Him to His knees in the garden.

Anger

But I can tell by watching you that theres no chance of pushing through.
The odds are so against us; you know most young love it ends like this.

In the midst of my trials in the garden of my life, I must admit I never respond so graciously.  I shake my fists in the air and rage against the stars that would dictate such a fate.  I blame God Himself temporarily forgetting that my arms are too short to box with God.  Forgetting that He has endured far worse from my hands and only desires my good in the long term.

God is not the author of heartbreak.  He is the author of love.  But you cannot have love without heartbreak.  There is no such thing.

God subjected Himself to that pain before any of us.  God was perfectly content before creating us.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were in perfect community, in perfect Love before the world we know was spoken into existence.  But it was out of the overflow of this love that God decided a perfect universe would be made somehow more complete with us in it.  It was out of this love that we were created.  Among our first acts to thank God for the inexpressible gift of somethingness out of nothingness that we responded by breaking His heart with our disobedience.

And yet I'm angry at God.  The weight of the evidence leads to an easy suggestion about which party should be truly grieved by this deal.

Bargaining

I meant what I said when I said I would rearrange my plans and change for you.

In the course of His ministry on Earth, Christ and his disciples happened upon a blind man one day.  His disciples, ever taught and never learned, immediately turn to Jesus and ask, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

Christ responds patiently, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life."  He tells them, "I am the light of the world."  He heals the blind man and sends him on his way home. 

I am sight.  Without me, you are all blind.

There is no bargain we can cut with God to avoid heartbreak, no deal that He would prefer.  It's as natural as a wildfire.  An Austrailian grass tree is a very special kind of tree.  Subject to the conditions of wildfires, they can become damaged but not die.  After the fire has finished, the trees are known to push new leaves and bloom brighter than they ever had before.  In fact, some Austrailian grass trees only bloom after a scouring fire.

Only the heart set ablaze by pain that knows the depths of the contrast joy provides.  It's only in contrast to the darkness that light gives meaning and purpose to our sight.

Depression

You know me; I've always been the kind with easy confidence.

Confident enough to honestly believe that nothing out there stopping me

especially not someone who's not loving me.

Now listen here I told you I could live on without loving you.

I was bluffing then, but it seems that just might have been the truth.

That doesn't make dealing with pain any less hard.  It still hurts just as much even to the enlightened mind.  But our suffering, even when its meaning is opaque, is not without purpose.  If we are to believe the words of scripture, temporary pain is producing in us a glory that is incomparable to what we had before.  Hope dilutes sadness and spreads until even depression is changed into a new substance entirely.  Bleak worlds are colored by hope.

As Paul writes it to the Corinthians in his second letter, "For if that which fades away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory."

Acceptance 

Well my dad told me, "One day son, this girl will think of what she's done
and hurting you will be the first of many more regrets to come."
And he said, "If she doesn't call, then it's her fault and it's her loss."
I say, "It's not that simple see, but then again it just may be."

"Yet not as I will, but as You will."

Christ concludes His prayer in the garden.  Accepts His fate, draws on God's strength even in the face weakness, and endures the cross. 

In the final analysis, heartbreak is not a reason to lose trust in God.  It is a reason to trust Him.  We see the heartbreak that he endures at our hands.

It's not a proof that God does not care for us.  It is a proof that He does.  Even from the cross, Christ petitions God on behalf of His murderers, namely you and me, "Forgive them for they know not what they do."  We almost never do.  But we should know that we can follow and trust the God who endures such heartbreak on our behalf no matter the heartbreak we must endure ourselves along the way.

I would be sad...