Once was enough.
I remember an article I read a long time ago that said a “broken heart” could actually occur medically – broken heart syndrome. John’s Hopkins website explains, “Stress cardiomyopathy, also referred to as the “broken heart syndrome,” is a condition in which intense emotional or physical stress can cause rapid and severe heart muscle weakness (cardiomyopathy).” I would believe this for myself.
There was an interview Kid Rock gave a few years ago on CBS Sunday Morning and he was discussing a relationship that ended in divorce. He equated the toxic relationship to holding on to a hot stove with both hands for an hour – not merely touching it but being perilously enamored and burned by it. When you are burned by a hot stove you learn to stop touching it. To put it in my own words, a big lesson in life is learning that sometimes what you love doesn’t love you back. I wonder if this lesson is something everyone experiences or just some.
I have been in a nostalgic sort of melancholy mood at times these past days. Even though the past can’t be changed the scars it leaves sometimes twinge, burn, and sting. It’s an unpleasant reminder of a previous injury. The thing is I inflicted a majority of the scars I carry myself. He was the razor I cut myself on emotionally, his claws caused pain that was so raw, familiar somehow, and yet absolutely new. I was driven to a level of madness as I worked out the puzzle – Question: “Why doesn’t he seem to care about me?” Answer: “Because he doesn't care.” Question: “What’s really going on here?” Answer: “He wants to be with someone else. Remember that person he spoke of oddly that time and with whom there was that odd exchange that night – yeah he wants to nail her. A-ha. Well that explains it.” Not so complicated after all. How boring. What a cliché. All things I never wanted to be. Twenty-nine years old and still a virgin that's got to show some sort of commitment to nonconformity. Pity I was ashamed by that difference instead of proud. What stings me most is that I had hopes that I never should have had. I abhor false hope and those who give it. By lack of forethought or by direct intention. Such a waste.
“I guess I have a weakness for lost causes once they’re really lost.” I don’t think I suffer from that affliction; Some causes are clearly lost and should be.
“You never give up, do you?”
“Only when I’m absolutely forced to. But I’m a very good loser…”
“Better than I am.”
“Well, I’ve had… more practice.”
Someone told me that everyone has heartbreaks and therefore mine isn’t special. I am sure everyone does have heartbreaks, BUT not everyone processes heartbreak the same way. Heartbreaks are personal and individual, they have layers and tunnels. There are different kinds of heartbreak - those imposed upon us and those we cause ourselves. There are times in life where we have our eyes wide shut, seeking out repeatedly the broken cisterns that hold no water hoping for our thirst to be quenched (Jeremiah 2:13).
"How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go
on, when in your heart, you begin to understand: there is no going back? There
are some things that time cannot mend, some hurts that go too deep… that have
taken hold."
My mistakes haunt me. I am not without sin of the deepest scarlet crimson. I am the whitewashed tomb harboring all kinds of decay inside (Matthew 23:27). At least I know that is what I am without Jesus. Everything and anything good comes from Him. What is your motive? If Jesus isn't the center, it's vainity.
“So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Romans 7:21-26; 8:1-4
““Then the lion said — but I don’t know if it spoke — You will have to let
me undress you. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty
nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.
“The very first tear he made was so deep that
I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin
off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me
able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You
know — if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like
billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” said Edmund.
“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off –
just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t
hurt – and there it was lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and
darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I
smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught
hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that
I’d no skin on — and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only
for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started
swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then
I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again…”
CS Lewis – The Voyage of the Dawntreader
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