Lavender & Lace

Tomorrow morning if you wake up
And the sun does not appear
I… I will be here
If in the dark we lose sight of love
Hold my hand and have no fear
Cause I… I will be here

I will be here
When you feel like being quiet
When you need to speak your mind
I will listen
And I will be here
When the laughter turns to crying
Through the winning, losing and trying
We’ll be together
Cause I will be here.

Song by Steven Curtis Chapman

I was allowed to date when I was in the 9th grade. I don’t think it was something my dad would have allowed, except that the boy who wanted to date me was someone I went to church with. His family knew my family, so I think that was the only reason it was deemed ok. He was a senior and he had a car, which was really cool to my friends. And so, with the permission from both our parents, he would pick me up and take me to dinner on Friday nights. Then when he would drop me back at my home we started this practice of parking the car, turning on some music, and dancing together in the driveway before saying goodnight.

This song by Steven Curtis Chapman was one of those songs. I know because I picked out the mix CD at Walmart specifically because it was titled; Top Wedding Songs. This was my heart, even as a kid.

It was beautiful and it was sappy. And I can only imagine my mother shaking her head each time she (not so inconspicuously) watched us out the front window, thought we would end up together. Spoiler alert, we didn’t. But I look back with a fondness at the tender way that boy loved me, even if it was for a short time.

When he left for college that summer he gifted me a different song as a parting gift, but I won’t share that here. It was another act of a kind and genuine heart.

And as I look back on my life I see that I have loved many good men.

My heart has given and received and been broken more times than I can count.

Rinse and repeat…

I have found that a broken heart is not only the hardest thing to heal, but the hardest to forgive as well. Because brokenheartedness takes on deep roots, builds up tall walls, and makes unbreakable promises of never again.

And as I begin to gather up my thoughts today I would like to just take a moment and address that not many people have had heartbreak. They have had breakups, where they were sad for a week or two. Something they eventually get over and move on from…

Heartbreak is very different.

Heartbreak is a year…two years…three years down the road still mourning. Still grieving. Still trying to pick up the pieces and make sense of it all.

It is a major life event.

It is an annihilation of the you that existed in the life of another person.

It’s not something you just get over.

I have people ask me sometimes, how did you do it? How did you get over it? And my answer is, I didn’t. It’s been a full time, reliance on the Lord to walk me through moments I couldn’t even crawl through.

It is concentrating on my identity and purpose in Him.

It is constantly opening up my locked fists in surrender and crying out for mercy.

A broken heart is awful.

It feels like death most of the time.

So forgiving out of that has been so difficult.

The amount of bitterness, contemptness…wanting to shout, I HOPE YOU’RE MISERABLE! Because of how miserable I’ve felt. It’s a desire to level the playing field. It’s a desire to ask why they got the better end of the deal. It’s comparison, its insecurity, its shame…

To the tenth degree.

So no, if you think forgiving a broken heart is a one time deal, I’m here to tell you it’s not. It’s a practice.

A surrendering that happens over and over again.

Because if I had it my way, I would have them suffer.

Beloved, forgiveness is releasing control. It’s acknowledging that we don’t have all the answers. It’s crawling into the lap of our Heavenly Father who loves us with a completeness that earthly love cannot match, and weeping. Over and over again.

Forgiveness is lamenting.

And if you remember from past writings, lamenting is not winning, it’s not manipulation, lamenting is an honest cry to the heart of God.

“Why?!“

And allowing his love and his compassion to move into those shattered places and lay a new foundation.

If you want to know where I find myself these days. It’s here. In the place where I can laugh again, where I can dance in freedom, and I am able to surrender the hard feelings when they arrive. Because they will come back around.

They haven’t left me yet and I don’t expect that they will for a while still.

But I’ve come to accept this.

To be patient with my heart that loves the way it was created to love.

And to fill the void with the tender whisper of Jesus who hears me when I cry and comforts me in my brokenness.

Who promises a new life. A new beginning. A new way. That is completely different from the place I came from. That is so much better.

But to get there you gotta go through the valley. And trust that you never walk alone, even as loneliness presses deep into your chest.

There is a profound loneliness in forgiveness.

It’s ok.

Not everyone will get it.

But I promise, it will get better.

It can only get better.

Take care my friend.