Broken Hearts & Bottomless Refills: How To Overcome a Breakup

Broken Hearts &
Bottomless Refills:
How To Overcome a Breakup

          Breakups are an unusual thing—they carry this pain that feels nearly physical, something I still can’t fully wrap my mind around. It doesn’t seem to matter how long it lasted or how much either side invested—pain is pain. My first breakup totally, undeniably sucked; still, it was the closest I ever drew near to God in my life. Whether you've been through a breakup, are going through one right now, or are dealing with a loss of any kind, I pray these truths that God taught me through my pain can speak lovingly and comfortingly to your soul in this time. Hold on, my friend--there's hope.

One: Don’t Forsake the Pain
         Pain hurts. I don’t know what type of pain you carry as you read this, but I just want to take a minute to validate your feelings. It's okay to be sad. Our world teaches us to celebrate happiness and shun sadness or anger. We suppress “negative” feelings when they show up, fearful of how they'll look if we express them or what they'll indicate about us. But the truth is, sometimes sadness is a Godly reaction to the brokenness surrounding us, and in our feelings of sadness, God allows us to understand a tiny fraction of the rejection, abandonment, and loss He endures daily with unrequited love from humans. God was grieved and filled with pain in Genesis 6:6, full of fierce anger in Jeremiah 30:24, sorrowful and troubled in Matthew 26:37, and deeply distressed in Mark 3:5. He weeps the death of His loved ones (John 11), is touched with compassion in witnessing others mourn (Luke 7:13), and filled with indignation when His people are exploited (Matthew 21:12). He has equipped us in His image with a full range of emotions, and each one beautifully reflects His heart for the world. When we allow ourselves to fully experience the weight of our feelings without censoring them, we become free to thoughtfully reflect and decide what to do with our emotions as we bring them before God. One day, He'll wipe every tear from our eye but until then, we cry because we're human and it hurts to see good things get broken. It's funny--you never see a tree freaking out in the winter when its leaves fall off and its branches left bare. Winter is a natural and necessary part of its life cycle, the time where roots search harder for moisture and nutrients. Losing leaves is a healthy part of hibernation, allowing trees to conserve energy. Trees prevented from going through normal dormancy patterns are unhealthy in the long run. 
            My sadness was frustrating; I longed to be efficient and move on--anything to numb the hurt. I attempted to "pray the pain away" and fix my sadness with longer quiet times. One evening after the breakup, a text triggered me and I spiraled into a panic attack. I sat on my bed with shortness of breath, gripping my Bible and blasting worship music, and after two hours when it hadn’t gone away, I was bewildered and in tears. But even though the pain didn't fully subside, God was ever present as He held my hand and promised He would get me through this. He doesn't always promise the sadness will diminish immediately, but He does guarantee that He'll be there to wipe away the tears. And I find that what God promises me--His constant presence and deeper joy--is greater than the fleeting dreams I wish He'd promise in that moment. Ancient Jewish myths tell how when a Shepherd finds his lost sheep, he breaks its legs and throws it over his shoulders to prevent it from wandering away or jumping off some cliff. I felt like that broken sheep. Even though my legs weren't physically broken, my heart felt shattered, and I had to be patient, because healing doesn’t happen overnight. A broken-legged sheep can’t be expected to dance the next day. Yet, after a loss, we expect ourselves to pick right back up and get on with life. God doesn’t work that way; He patiently extends compassion to the hurting and comfort to the broken-hearted. He performs the healing within us on His own timeline. And, just like that broken-legged sheep, I could know with confidence that I was not falling off the shoulders of my Good Shepherd. He would carry me safely home in His timing.

Two: Grieving but not Despair

So if we can't get rid of sadness, what do we do with it? We have a choice to make; we can let our pain and grief cave in on us or we can bring our feelings to the Great Comforter and ask Him for help. The Bible says to rejoice in the Lord always (Philippians 4:4-8) yet also calls us to mourn with those who mourn. How can we simultaneously mourn and rejoice? I believe we do this by allowing ourselves to feel the full weight of our loss and expressing ourselves emotionally while still clinging to the truths we know about God. Grieving can be a joyful, worshipful act to the Lord when we measure joy as trust in God rather than regarding it as feelings of happiness. You see, there is a difference between grief and despair. Grief cries yet all the while knows her God will not abandon her and eternal hope is anchored in Him. Our tears won’t change His faithfulness and promise to remain always, His love for us, His desire to do good to us, or His presence in the struggle. We are called to fight against despair, the act of losing all hope and giving up on God entirely. If He was my salvation and I was a Child of God whether I felt it in the moment or not, then I could not truly “despair” no matter how sad I was. God reminded me that my treasure wasn’t this boy—it was Jesus, a treasure that I could take with me into eternity. I wasn’t actually “losing” anything that could not be matched in Jesus' fullness. I had to remind myself of all the things that would forever be true of me thanks to Jesus and His work on the cross. My hope wasn’t the “perfect boyfriend” (which doesn’t exist, FYI) I might meet in the future or the “stronger person” I'd be after the heartbreak--it was the treasure I have in Jesus right now. I have my Happily Ever After today.

And in those moments where the fears were so real and crippled me with stomach pains and anxious thoughts, all I could do was cry out to Jesus, “Help me!” I begged God to help me see beyond my feelings, and He always came through, whether that was calming the crashing waves of my emotions, speaking truth through His Holy Spirit, showing me all the things I could be thankful for, or reminding me that His words are truer than my passing feelings. I learned the importance of memorizing the Word and meditating on it throughout the day, as I actively fought to replace the lies my mind was believing and guard my thoughts with truth. I began to memorize Scriptures like Psalm 73:26, Isaiah 54:10, and Micah 7:8. He helped me recognize the danger of half-truths: it was true that I might never be with this particular boy again. But that didn't mean I'd never be happy again (which was something that felt so true in my tears). I had to reject this lie and replace it with truth--my joy comes from the Lord. Sometimes, it’s impossible to “not think” about the boy by thinking about not thinking about him. God doesn’t call us to alter our feelings; He calls us to pour them out in honesty to Him and trust His promises, letting our choice to believe Him guide our actions. Rather than trying to stop liking the boy, I filled my mind with thoughts of Scripture and prayer and Jesus’ character. He taught me how to focus on loving Jesus more instead of liking the boy less.

Surrounding myself with incredible friends who pointed me to God was also a gracious part of fighting despair. My friends gave me the space to cry while speaking gentle truth to me and supporting efforts to have fun in healthy ways to distract myself from time to time. Fighting despair is an active battle, and for the first few weeks, my mind went through this cycle of prayer and Scripture recitation every minute. There's no set timeline for how long it takes a broken heart to heal, but I can promise you that it won't feel this heavy forever. For the time being, we must fight to hold onto Him, but it will get easier. Keep bringing your fears and feelings to God in prayer and soaking in Scripture, speaking it to your soul when you feel tempted to give in to despair. Let His truth cradle you. 

Three: Contentment Isn’t Based on Circumstances

        This might be one of the hardest things to believe, but Paul still writes about it in his letter to the church of Philippi from jail. In Philippians 4, Paul shares about how he has learned the secret of being content in every circumstance--his contentment is found in Christ. His ability to be content isn't found in his surrounding circumstances but rather in knowing who Christ is and what He promises. Jesus makes it possible to be anywhere and have enough because HE is enough and, where He comes from (Heaven), people never go without. We all know that famous Psalm 23 "The Lord is my Shepherd; I lack nothing." But in order for the second part to be true (about lacking nothing), the first part must also. Have we let the Lord become our Shepherd? Have we gone to Him in our needs, empty-handed, and asked Him to meet them in Himself? This doesn't mean we're always going to walk away from quiet time with warm and fuzzy feelings but it does mean that He offers us greater truths to hold fast to in our times of suffering. Romans 8:38 promises us that nothing can separate us from His love. Romans 8:28 assures us that He's working all circumstances in our lives for our good. Psalm 139 reminds us that He knows us intimately and is familiar with every single day ahead. Isaiah 41:10 claims that we're not alone. Isaiah 54:10 emphasizes that His unfailing love is unshakable. Psalm 138:8 tells that He will fulfill His purpose for us. 

        Just because you're walking through difficulty now doesn't mean that God has abandoned you or even that what He's brought you from was better than where you are now. I think of the Israelites in the wilderness; as soon as they hit a rough patch in the midst of their deliverance, they were ready to turn around and head back into slavery, questioning if God called them there to die. But even their rough patches were part of God's purpose to prepare them--the Israelites needed to learn to fight, as they'd never been in battle before. God brought the Amalekites not to destroy but to train them. God might be teaching us valuable lessons in the process that we will need to learn in order to stand in the promise. If we don't walk the process, we won't be ready to embrace the promise. Rather than begging God to end this, perhaps we ought to ask what He desires of us in this. Much like the Israelites, I have Hindsight 20/20, where I tend to look at the past and idealize it as perfect, forgetting the struggles and highlighting the joys. God wasn’t calling me to reject my past or regard dating as ugly but urging me to be content in the present, knowing He was the provider of all my needs. He opens His hand and satisfies our desires and longings with good things that He deems appropriate for the right time (Psalm 145).

Four: God Uses Pain to Heal Us

 The morning after the break up, I awoke with such aching in my heart that I didn’t want to go to God. I was upset that He let me go through this while knowing it would end. But I knew I couldn't survive the breakup without Him, so I let Him in. I told Him all my emotions, frustrations, and dreams now dashed away. I asked Him how He felt about me. How He felt about the boy. Why it had to be this way. 

 He told me that He loved the boy and would take good care of him. He told me that it was okay to miss good things; He missed them too. But He had great plans for me that didn’t involve this boy, and though I was willing to give up God's plans for a boy, God wasn’t. And as I cried out to Him in honesty about my feelings, I didn’t feel the sadness go away but I realized God did feel my pain. Perhaps even deeper than I did because He felt both the boy’s broken heart and mine at the same time. 

I believe God cares so much more about us pouring out our hearts before Him in honest than trying to manipulate our emotions into manicured shells with smiley faces pained over. That's because when we're honest with God about our needs, He can begin to meet them. There was so much God wanted to teach me in my pain, unique lessons that could be learned most in this season. Because when you’re crying and don’t want to get up in the morning as the thought of getting dressed or seeing people agonizes you, you learn more than ever that you can’t get through on your own strength. As we endure heartbreak and struggle, the dirty parts of us that we managed to skillfully cloak in the past rise to the surface. We discover the things we leaned upon that can't carry us into eternity and turn to the One who loves us most. Joni Eareckson Tada gave this incredible message at Times Square Church on her suffering as a paraplegic who lost bodily movement after a diving accident at age 17. But, while she valued physical healing above all else, the Lord was looking at her and valuing an inner healing He would bring through her physical suffering. So often we prioritize immediate healing, and while the Gospels indicate that Jesus cares about healing our bodies too, He searches to redeem our souls and bring spiritual recovery. While God didn't initiate the brokenness of the world (sin and evil did), He has this trademark of painting beauty from the ugliest circumstances and isn't afraid to use pain to draw us to Him. We want to conquer weakness and be set free; He wants us to be still and trust Him. We mourn but He teaches us to take delight in our infirmities. We label limitation as a hinderance in serving God; He assures us that this is the secret to success and gives us claim to Him, proclaiming that His power is made perfect in our weakness. In our pain, we have the opportunity to experience firsthand how strong God is--if we're never emptied, we'll never experience His overflowing abundance filling our souls. “The more I lean on Jesus,” Joni exclaimed, “the stronger I discover Him to be. When you’re suffering, there is no one better to go to than the one who hung like meat on a hook. He wrote the book on suffering. God resists the proud—it is the sorrowful who are always rejoicing in Him, who know they’re weak but know His strength. I love my wheel-chair, as it is the wave which throws me against the Rock who carries me firmly."  

Sing Again:

        And after some time, the pain became a memory, and I forgot what it was like to wake up sad. The next few months were flooded with some of the happiest memories of my life as God brought new gifts. The best part was that I felt an even greater sense of freedom than I had before this relationship—I no longer needed this boy. Like the woman at the well, I discovered that Jesus is the water that never runs dry, and even though I definitely still feel thirsty at times, every time I thirst, God is enough to satisfy. Perhaps we have this unending longing to be filled because God has an unending desire to satisfy us. He’s never finished filling us, and though sometimes I wish I didn’t have needs, my thirst causes me to run to Him and allows me to appreciate His ability to fulfill me so much greater.

            We'll probably feel a lot more thirsts in our lifetime on this side of Heaven. But good news is, in Jesus, there are always free refills. We just have to drink up.