Hope in heartbreak

It's hard to forget about Valentine's day when you work in an elementary school. Cheerful hearts hang from ceilings, cupids adorn walls, and Kindergartners counsel me on matters of love. Some (I'd say most) people see Valentine's day as an opportunity to show their affection for their loved ones. Yet, for people who've experienced heartbreak, Valentine's day can be a painful reminder of loss. Having experienced several significant deaths in the last year, this Valentine's day is a difficult holiday to celebrate. However, despite the celebrations of love that festoon my workplace, I take comfort in the fact that I am not alone in this sense of loss. Sharing in the sadness with others who've experienced loss or difficulty can be a great encouragement during unwelcome holidays. One particular encouragement came to me from the writings of a young Dutch girl back in the early 1900's.

This young girl’s name was Corrie and, by her own description, was not a pretty girl. Corrie said of herself that she was “far too bashful, her jaw too square, legs too long, and hands too large” to attract the attention of boys. However, on a sunny day in June, Corrie fell in love with a young man named Karel. Karel was 26 years old, strikingly handsome and, most importantly, reciprocated Corrie’s affections. Corrie writes how, after one particular Sunday together, she rested her hand upon his arm and that “was the only thing that kept me from soaring right over the peaked rooftops of Haarlem”. Despite Corrie and Karel’s mutual affection for each other, the two eventually were forced apart. Karel was offered a pastorate in south Holland but they both agreed to write each other. Corrie and Karel exchanged letters over that summer and fall until one day Karel showed up at her door. Corrie flung open the door to see her beloved Karel with a young woman, his new fiancee. Corrie explained how she processed her heartbreak in her book “The Hiding Place”:

 "How long I lay on my bed sobbing for the one love of my life I do not know. Later, I heard Father’s footsteps coming up the stairs. For a moment I was a little girl again waiting for him to tuck the blankets tight. But this was a hurt that no blanket could shut out, and suddenly I was afraid of what Father would say. Afraid he would say, “There’ll be someone else soon,” and that forever afterward this untruth would lie between us. For in some deep part of me I knew already that there would not- soon or ever- be anyone else.
The sweet cigar-smell came into the room with Father. And of course he did not say the false, idle words.
“Corrie,” he began instead, “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, Corrie, we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel.
“God loves Karel- even more than you do- and if you ask Him, He will give you His love for this man, a love nothing can prevent, nothing destroy. Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way, Corrie, God can give us the perfect way.”
I did not know, as I listened to Father’s footsteps winding back down the stairs, that he had given me more than the key to this hard moment. I did not know that he had put into my hands the secret that would open far darker rooms than this- places where there was not, on a human level, anything to love at all.”

Sure enough, Corrie never married. Yet God went on to use her life as a single woman in mightier ways than being Karel's wife ever could. Corrie's heartbreak as a young girl was just the first of the many difficulties she would endure in her lifetime. Yet God used Corrie's heartbreak and subsequent losses to bring about His greater purposes. Corrie spent the rest of her life sharing the truth she learned through great pain: "Jesus can turn loss into glory" -Corrie Ten Boom

In the face of devastating loss we can choose to trust that God is bringing about His purposes through loss, pain and heartbreak. This Valentine's day (and every day henceforth!) I'm choosing to trust that God is working out His purpose in spite of the pain. And God’s purposes are good. This morning at church we sang the hymn “Be Still my Soul”. The truth of its words, written in 1752, ring as true today as they did back then:

“Be still my soul the Lord is on thy side 

Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain

Leave to thy God to order and provide

In every change He faithful will remain

Be still my soul thy best, thy heavenly friend

Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end”