Healing Broken Hearts

Healing Broken Hearts // May 27, 2007

Taken from “The Hiding Place” by Corrie Ten Boom.

“Do you know what hurts so very much? It’s love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked, that means pain.
There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill the love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies too. Or we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel.
God loves that person—even more than you do—and if you ask Him, He will give you His love for them, a love nothing can prevent, nothing destroy. Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way, God can give us the perfect way.”

I was still in kindergarten in these matters of love. My task just then was to give up my feeling for him without giving up the joy and wonder that had grown with it. And so, that very hour lying there on my bed, I whispered the enormous prayer:

“Lord, I give to you the way I feel about him, my thoughts about our future, oh, you know, everything! Give me your way of seeing him instead. Help me to love him the way you do. That much.”

My thoughts

I believe that reading this book at that time  was totally God ordained. It was no coincidence that I read this; I knew right away God was showing me something. Instead of blocking that love, letting it all go to waste, or worse—turn into hatred—I needed to give all these feelings over to God, and let Him turn it into something beautiful; something that would seem impossible to our imperfect human nature—to love someone that had hurt you so much.

I prayed that prayer right after reading it. I prayed God would help me see him* the way He did—an imperfect person, just like me. And because of God’s grace, He took away all the hatred inside of me that was tearing me down, hatred that would have destroyed me. He filled me with compassion for that boy, and that special love that only God could give me.

And now here I am, three and a half years later. There’s been many ups and downs through it all. I’ve prayed that prayer many many times since then, and by God’s grace this has ended up to be one of the greatest relationships I have ever had with anyone. I know the future is very uncertain, but I can say without a doubt that I can take whatever is coming, and I trust that God has a plan, the best is yet to come. Don’t ever forget that.