A letter to a "brokenhearted"
My Dearest Friend,
As the sun rises this morning, my thoughts are completely with you. I have been holding you in my heart, and I ache knowing the weight of the pain and confusion you are carrying right now.
There are no easy words for a time like this, when you have pleaded and prayed with all your might for a different outcome, only to be met with the very thing you feared. It is a lonely and bewildering place to be.
Please, do not feel for a moment that you have to pretend to be strong or that your disappointment is a sign of weak faith. Your heart is broken, and God is not afraid of your heartbreak. In fact, the Bible gives us language for these moments, so we know we are not alone in them. The psalmist, wrestling with his own thoughts and unending sorrow, cried out:
"How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?" (Psalm 13:1-2)
Does that not echo some of what you feel? The exhaustion of wrestling, the pain of feeling forgotten after praying for so long. Even more powerfully, from the depths of agony, we hear the cry:
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest." (Psalm 22:1-2)
These are not the words of someone who has lost faith; they are the words of someone whose faith is so real, they can bring their deepest anguish directly to God. Jesus Himself spoke these words from the cross. Your pain is a holy ground, and you can bring all of it—the confusion, the anger, the disappointment—to Him. He can hold it.
I can only imagine the storm of questions in your mind. "Why? Why did this happen when I prayed so hard?" We are desperate for answers, for a reason that makes sense. And in these moments, when our own understanding is shattered, Scripture offers not a simple answer, but a gentle invitation to trust a bigger story. God whispers to us through the prophet Isaiah:
"'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' declares the Lord. 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.'" (Isaiah 55:8-9)
This is not meant to silence our questions, but to comfort us with the truth that we see only a fraction of the picture. We are invited to "lean not on our own understanding" (Proverbs 3:5), not because our understanding is worthless, but because right now, it is overwhelmed. And that is okay.
I know that talk of hope can feel distant, but I want to leave you with a small, flickering candle for the darkness. It comes from the book of Lamentations, after the writer has poured out his soul in utter despair. He makes a conscious choice, a gentle turn of his mind:
"Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." (Lamentations 3:21-23)
His hope wasn't based on his circumstances changing, but on the unchanging character of God. The promise is that God's compassion is new this morning. For you. Right now.
And there is this cornerstone promise, one to hold onto even when you can’t feel it. It does not say that this thing that happened is good. It is not. But it does say this:
"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him..." (Romans 8:28)
This speaks to a God who is such a master artist that He can take the most broken, painful, and unwanted pieces of our lives and, in time, weave them into something that has purpose and goodness. Joseph, after decades of betrayal and injustice, was able to look back and say to those who harmed him, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good" (Genesis 50:20).
My friend, this is a long road. Please be gentle with yourself. There is no timeline for grief. For now, just know that you are loved, both by me and by the "Father of compassion and the God of all comfort" (2 Corinthians 1:3), who sits with you in the ashes, right where you are.
I will continue to pray for you, not for easy answers, but for comfort, for strength for each next breath, and for the deep peace that can somehow, miraculously, coexist with great pain.
With much love and holding you close in my thoughts,
Your Friend
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