The good kind of heartache…
This summer I went to Florida to reunite with my college friends. There is a beach house near St. Augustine that we call home, although many of us had not passed through it's doors in over 20 years. The weekend was a blur of old jokes, new jokes, and more laughter than I have had in a very long time. We took long, conversational walks on the beach and stayed up late for fear of missing a single moment. When we are together, I feel that time has not passed at all AND, simultaneously, that it is moving way too fast. As the weekend rolled to an end and people started to travel back to their homes across the country, my chest began to ache in a familiar way. It is a specific pain, bittersweet. I simultaneously feel that I want nothing to do with this kind of heartache AND that I never, ever want to let it go.
I have given pieces of my heart to people who used it for malice, and I have given pieces of my heart to people who made it more whole. When we get hurt by those we love, fear will have us shut down and swear we'll never do it again. We'll never love again, because the pain is too much to bear. Or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, we go into hyperdrive and give our hearts away again and again to anyone who will have us. These are two choices that I have made, and neither have served me other than in the hard lessons those choices ultimately provided.
Today, I would like to offer another way. Rather than swinging back and forth on a pendulum of certain despair, either closing off completely or wantonly throwing your heart pieces to any old schmoe, try discernment. You are worthy of good love. Healthy love. Love that grows even when pieces of your heart are far away in the souls of old friends. Your people, the right people, will cherish those gifts of your heart and nurture them, even from afar. And when all of your heart pieces are reunited in one space, even for a brief weekend? That kind of wholeness, that special bittersweet love, is God's greatest gift to us.
