love and heartache

“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”-The Dread Pirate Roberts (The Princess Bride)

Heartache permeates the vast array of life experiences. We love and lose and live to love again… to love and lose and love even more. We suffer the death of a family member or the loss of a first crush and, regardless of the circumstances, the stark reality of lost love cuts hard and fast. Granted, heartache is experienced in degrees- shades of pain, if you will. But let’s not discount any of the experiences along our journey that rock us to our core; each broken heart and the process of mending helps us to take step after step in shaping the ways that we love.If anyone wants to step forward to tell me that you have never experienced heartache, please feel free. Just permit me to inform you that either you are in denial or- the far worse possibility- you have never genuinely invested love into someone else’s life. What a grievous place to be- to find that you have never truly loved!None of us desire to feel the sharp pangs that course through the mind and soul. None of us want the odd mix of anguish and dark numbness that resides in our chest. None of us like hearing words of rejection or betrayal spoken into our lives. Let’s be honest, we all would far rather shed tears of joy than to feel the agony roll up through our body in wave after wave that causes streams of sorrow to streak out of red, puffy eyes down chilled cheeks. But let me ask this… What is the cost of loving fully?Though I may be a minority voice, I am of the opinion that true love takes sacrifice. That means that there is real cost to love and therefore, there is real potential for wounding of the heart. I believe genuinely that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.The fact is that we are going to get hurt along the road of life as long as we allow ourselves to love. As we experience the ebb and flow of love and heartache, we learn better how to love in the future. That is, we learn to love more deeply- if we don’t allow the pain to prevent us from loving again.When all is said and done, God has called people to love. Love God. Love others. In the final hour, as I stand before the throne of God, I would desire to go before Him in humility hoping that he would say to me, “My child, you loved well in your days… Well done good and faithful servant.” The pain of heartache is a simple necessity along this journey of learning to love more. It’s worth it to be able to set my head to the coolness of my pillow knowing that I did all that I could in that day to love much and to love warmly and to love deeply. Isn't that what true love is anyway?

Check out the lyrics from "Fidelity" by Regina Spektor:

I never loved nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting my heart truly
I got lost in the sounds

I hear in my mind All these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind all this music
And it breaks my heart
And it breaks my heart
And it breaks my heart
It breaks my heart

And suppose I never met you
Suppose we never fell in love
Suppose I never ever let you kiss me
so sweet and so soft
Suppose I never ever saw you
Suppose we never ever called
Suppose I kept on singing love songs
just to break my own fall

Just to break my fall
Just to break my fall
Break my fall
Break my fall

All my friends say
that of course its
gonna get better
Gonna get better
Better better better better
Better better better

I never love nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting by heart truly
I got lost In the sounds

I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind All this music

And it breaks my heart
It breaks my heart
I hear in my mind all of these voices
I hear in my mind all of these words
I hear in my mind all of this music
Breaks myHeart
Breaks my heart

"Death can not stop true love, it can only delay it for a while."-The Dread Pirate Roberts (The Princess Bride)


p.s. Even pirates get it!

the creeping wilderness

"The neglected heart will soon be a heart overrun with worldly thoughts; the neglected life will soon become a moral chaos; the church that is not jealously protected by mighty intercession and sacrificial labors will before long become the abode of every evil bird and the hiding place for unsuspected corruption. The creeping wilderness will soon take over that church that trusts in its own strength and forgets to watch and pray." ~A.W. Tozer