He heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds.

Psalm 147:3

Almost 20 years ago, a song called We Live was popular on Christian radio stations. The point of it seems to be: you never know when tragedy is about to strike, so make the most of every day you have.  It starts with the line, “There’s a cross on the side of the road where a mother lost her son…”  Back then I listened to it in a detached manner – someone else’s child, someone else’s pain – and I would sing along to the catchy refrain.

One day my husband and I sent our child off to summer camp with happy well-wishes, “Be good! Have fun!” but as we started back home, that song came on. Instantly, tears sprang to our eyes and our hands collided on the way to turn the radio dial. For an unguarded moment, the thought broke through the wall around our hearts: what if this was the last time we would see our child? The pain of not having our child in our lives was too great to think about. We did not speak.  We changed the station and pushed the thought back into the depths of our hearts, behind the wall.

Today, tragically, we do not have this child in our lives.  I know it hurts my husband and he knows it hurts me.  We never talk about the pain, though.  I don’t discuss it with him or with anyone else.  My close friends and family know the pain is there.  “That must be very hard. I’m sorry,” they say.  There is nothing else to say.  So we change the radio station and push the thought away. 

I honestly don’t know how my husband deals with it.  I have never asked him, and he has never spoken of it. Sometimes we talk around the edges of the topic, as though we are standing on the shore of a lake covered in thin ice. We might put the toes of one foot on the edge and step down, only to watch the ice break off and crumble.  No, this ice will definitely not hold our weight. We turn from the pain and walk away.

The only one I let into my walled-off, hurting heart is Jesus. Sometimes when I am with him, I let him see my hurt.  He doesn’t ask questions.  He doesn’t chide me for a lack of faith. He doesn’t let me go down the path of thinking, what if I had done this, or not done that?  He just holds me, sitting in my pain with me.  When I am ready, he dries my tears.  He binds up my broken heart, like putting cool ointment on a burn.  He gives me strength to move forward in my life.  Sometimes he speaks words of hope, or gives me a glimpse of future joy. Always, he floods me with love so tangible I can almost float on it. 

I gather his strength into myself like fuel for the journey.  I straighten my posture and look ahead with clear eyes.  I move forward into the light, ready to face life again, ready perhaps to lend a hand to someone else walking the same hard path.

What pain is buried in your heart, and how do you deal with it?