We spend our lives trying to figure out how to deal with a broken heart, and if we are truly lucky we will experience heart break more than once – and just maybe many times. Our hearts will break because life changes, we will lose those we love to differences, distance, and death. When I first walked my five year old son down the cinderblock halls toward a kinder garden class room, allowed his tiny hand to slip from mine and be placed in the hand of a stranger…I cried. As I clutched the hand of my dying mother and uttered the words good-bye…I wept. Then when my younger sister told me she had been diagnosed with a ravenous cancer and had only months to live…I whaled.
Our children will move away or go off to college, job relocation will uproot us from our friends and neighbors, our siblings will move across the globe, our relationships will hurt us and even sometimes result in divorce, and death will be part of all our lives. Little losses and big losses are the inevitable, and we will spend our lives recovering from those losses. Part of the recovering is keeping the heart open to always love again. I myself am willing to be hurt a thousand times to keep that feeling of love alive in my heart.
To love deeply is to suffer great sorrow; the greater the pain the deeper love has grown. Some I have heard complain that loss has made them bitter and filled with angry regret, this I refuse to comprehend. A heart that is cut wide open is a heart that has lived beautifully in spite of knowing that all things must end. Life changes and life changes us, but it’s up to us in how we change. With each fracture there is new growth, and out of that new growth develops a heart that can love even more deeply – if you continually return to the light. There are dark moments in deep loss, but the true light is the memory which reminds us that it is always worth the pain. The best way to recover from loss is to grieve deeply, reach out to others, love large and always be willing to be broken again.