Tender Heart, Thankful Heat

Happiness and joy are not the same thing, you know that, you’ve heard that a million times, but I’m going to make the case that thankfulness and joy just might be.  For Christmas this year, one of my best friends made me a gratitude journal and encouraged me to really focus on all I’m thankful for in 2015. It’s been amazing y’all!  Actively practicing a language of thanksgiving is transformative. At the very least, thanksgiving is the soil in which joy grows.

That being said, I’m going to be really honest here. It’s pretty easy for me to give thanks for the small things.  Like when the weather’s beautiful, or after something great happens at work, or when I get to spend time with the people I love—I’m pretty quick to offer up a prayer of thanksgiving for those types of things. But Valentine ’s Day was this past weekend and I discovered that giving thanks for the season of life I’m in at the moment, when I’m not particularly thrilled to be here (to put it lightly), was not something I was willing or able to do.

When we’re disappointed, when we’ve been hurt or left out or let down, we often are NOT feeling thankful for our present/current circumstances. When we’re hurting and in pain it’s hard to be thankful, even though we are called to give thanks in all circumstances.

It seems unfair that God should ask us to be thankful when our hearts are breaking. Forcing a smile when all you want to do is cry feels hypocritical and wrong. But this “fake it till you make it” mentality isn’t what God’s about.  Read the Psalms, read Lamentations, or any of the prophets for that matter. God invites us to tell him it like it is, with all the ugly, raw, bitter, emotion we can muster. We’ve bought into this lie that as believers, we aren’t supposed to feel anything other than “happy”. Consequently, we exert an insane amount of time and energy manufacturing a superficial façade out of shallow “happiness” to hide our pain, when in reality, life in Christ wakes us up to feel things more deeply than ever before. The world hardens and numbs our hearts so that it takes more and more to move us toward compassion or anger.  Dulled and unfeeling, our hearts are no longer filled with compassion and fail to spur us into action to ease the suffering of our neighbors. 

I can’t even begin to fathom the tenderness of the heart of God. God, 100% holy, righteous, and good, is moved by even the smallest plea from the weakest believer.  As we grow closer to the heart of God, we too begin to feel more, not less.

So when life sucks, when we feel the bitter burn of rejection, when our eyes and hearts are opened to see the suffering in our world, and it hurts so much you can hardly bear it,  it’s a sign that we are in fact coming to life. That the work God began in us is continuing to mold and shape us. And that’s what we can give thanks for.  As we give thanks for these things, for who God IS for all he’s done and all he promises to do, slowly but surely we find our hearts moved to a place where we are able to thank him for our present too.

Broken Heart

Before Christmas I mentioned that I’ve been waiting on a lot of things… but really, I've just been waiting on one thing.

   

For months I prayed and prayed and prayed that God would give me this thing that I desired so desperately and guess what? —He didn’t—and my heart was absolutely crushed.

Here’s the thing about a broken heart…

Your heart holds all your emotions safe and sound, like a cute little cup. When your heart breaks, all those emotions come tumbling out all at once in one confusing jumbled mess. Anger, fear, despair, sadness, perhaps a brief glimmer of happiness or a gentle nudge of hope—you feel them ALL at once as your heart is shattered into a million tiny pieces.  

(For someone who prides herself in being a highly emotionally stable person, suffering from a broken heart was particularly unsettling and incredibly stressful.)

I don’t know why your heart may be breaking. Maybe you didn’t get the job you wanted, or maybe you just lost the one you loved. Maybe you’ve been betrayed by someone you trusted. Maybe you’ve witnessed an important relationship come to end. Maybe this was the first round of holiday’s you had to spend without a loved one. Maybe Kroger doesn't carry your favorite kind of ice cream anymore, I don’t know! Whatever the reason, here’s something else you need to know about a broken heart…

Take care that you don’t get lost among the pieces. When your heart is broken it is SO easy to get trapped in a pit of self-pity. I’m not saying that you shouldn't grieve. No, no! By all means, take time to weep, to morn for your dashed hopes and ruined dreams, but don’t get so lost in your own heartache that you can’t see others who are also hurting or how God is working all around you. 

When you’re hurting, when your heart is so open and raw that even the littlest things can cause stinging pain, it’s so tempting to try and work things out on your own, to barricade your heart and refuse to let anyone near you. Don’t do that!  Community is important in all seasons of life, but particularly so in times of heartbreak. I’ve come to discover that while it can hurt to hear how God is working in someone else’s life when it feels like he’s all but completely forsaken you, it’s a good, healing-kind of hurt and serves as an important reminder that he is still in fact working.     

Now I realize that the source of your broken heart may very well be the result of feeling that you don't have anyone to turn to in this moment. Maybe you've just moved to a new city and don't know anyone. Maybe the people or person you thought cared about you the most is no longer in your life for whatever reason. My prayer for you, is that you would be brave and bold and begin the slow, often awkward and occasionally frustrating process, of plugging into a community. I pray that this year welcomes you into a place where you feel a sense of deep belonging, a place where you know you are both wanted and needed.  

And if you were one of the those dear people who bore witness to my heartbreak (and consequent near complete emotional breakdown) —and you know who you are—thank you for sticking with me and helping me sweep up the pieces. You da the best!