There is more than one way to experience heart break, the most common way it is spoken of is when it comes to having your heart broken by someone we are in a romantic relationship with someone. The type of heart break I have experienced is not of the most common type, it is heart break I have experienced in my relationship with the Lord.
The question then becomes, how can the Lord break my heart? The answer most true to my relationship with the Lord is this: having misplaced expectations, perspectives and focus on the things the Lord gives and attributing the pain and hurt from what I would classify as failure, disappointment or being let down; to the character of God.
To give an example of heart break from the Lord I will recount the first time I ever felt I had a broken heart. My heart was broken the day my mother died. It made no sense to me, I could not wrap my head around her death. I could not find any reason for it, to me it could not be justified. It just did not make any sense at all, no matter how I looked at it.
The Lord truly broke my heart and it seemed as though He did not care to explain why. In turn, I after crying many tears, praying many prayers and asking many (in reality it was one) questions it became clear my heart was broken and the Lord continued about His day as if noting happened. My prayers asking "why" were never answered.
Two months later my already broken heart was shattered. To this I also looked to the heavens and asked the Lord yet again a simple question, why, to which He replied, "[silence/nothing]". Since He had chosen not to answer I placed my focus back to my present place...looking at my youngest brother lying in the street with a pool of blood gathering around his head...yelling at the top of my lungs and looking for the car that put my brother to sleep.
Why didn't he see him?
Why didn't he stop?
Why isn't Mali moving?
Why hasn't anyone come out to help?
Why do my grandparents have to see their grandson like this on their visit?
Why God? Why?
There is no wasted pain in your life. God will use it ALL! This is something my Pastor said one Sunday at the end of his sermon. It did not occur to me that I had allowed the pain I felt at the time of losing my mother and brother to make my heart hard toward the Lord. I had misplaced my hurt and emotions, instead of acknowledging them and taking them to the Lord's feet, I took it and attributed it to the Lord's character.
The truth of it all, I have not had my heartbroken by the Lord. The greater truth, when I misplace my feelings, thoughts and emotions I am liable to misplace them wherever, the lesson I have learned is the Lord cares about me enough to allow me to feel what I feel, misplace those feelings and still call me His own. His desire is not simply to correct and redirect but to also help us see the error in our ways even if that means it takes time to see the truth more than our circumstances or feelings.
I will leave us with a prayer,
Father, I thank you for your loving-kindness. I am thankful for your patience with me. I thank you for loving me deeper and better than anyone else can. You are the giver of hope and you sustain my joy, for that I say thank you. I want to also thank you for showing me my heart and the error of my ways. I am thankful that you are a father who corrects his children in love. I pray that you would continue to change my perspective and help me to see you in truth and not from the lens of my feelings and emotions. Would you forgive me for misplacing my hurt and pain on you, for giving your character names that are unlike you? Would you forgive me for the ways I have lived out of that misplacement and have in turn stood before you half way? You are not a Father who breaks hearts but you are a father who mends them and makes them whole, would finish the work you started in me and mend and make my heart whole?
I pray and ask all of these things in Jesus' name,
Amen