Breaking Our Own Hearts

and accepting God's rescue

Sometimes, there just aren’t words. It is not that life isn’t happening, that there isn’t meaning in the day-to-day.

It is that a part of us needs to quiet. 

There is no big problem to solve, no hard pain to treat. 

We are in a space with all possibility and hope, yet claiming this space feels distant somehow. 

Unless we slow. 

Will you let my quiet fill you? Will you let my tenderness pull you under?

There is always an invitation before me, and I struggled to see it for so long: the invitation to lay down insecurity and comparison—the part of me that wants to prove my worth.

Even though I thought I was past that, that God and I had dealt with my struggle to prove, He told me it wasn’t finished. That became clear this month in the beauty of the Montana skyline: on a trip with friends, Jesus, in His fierce gentleness, let me fall. It was the only way I could listen to Him: surrender. 

When we fall, it feels like both the worst and the most beautiful thing, but only then do we allow God’s rescue.

God’s rescue is what we need to free ourselves from the self that doesn’t think she is enough, that thinks her worth is what she does rather than who she is. When the invitation comes, we always need to say yes.

With friends, I shared how God let me break my own heart and how I needed that to happen: 

“One of the biggest struggles I have faced for most of my life is that I just haven’t liked myself very much. I didn’t feel I was worth much for much of my life.

And when you don’t feel like you are worth much, you do one of two things. You either give up, throw in the towel and feel sorry for yourself. Or you try to prove it—prove your worth—in any way you can . . . And that is what I spent a lot of my life doing—trying to prove my worth, trying to be more than I was--more organized, more punctual, more with it, more put-together, more creative, more . . . more. And it broke my heart.

Because if we live believing that what we do determines who we are, rather than letting who we are inspire what we do, we are not listening to God’s voice in our hearts. We are not participating in the conversation God wants to have with us. 

And this is what is true: life with God is all about the conversation.

One of the biggest challenges we face is believing that it is possible to have conversations with God—to believe He speaks to us in response to our prayers. We ask Him, “Am I loved right now, like this? Are you here? Do you see me? Do you care?”

Some of us grew up in the church, singing the song “Jesus Loves Me.” But it isn’t until we have encountered Jesus, when we listen for Him, and until we get to know Him, that we can believe this. And until we believe this, deep, deep in our hearts, we continue to try to work for love. And when we keep working for love rather than owning that we already are loved—like this, right now—we ultimately break our hearts.”

Through these words, I am preaching to myself.

So, I seek rhythms of quiet—and interactions with God. I look for Him, choosing rest and stillness more than achievement and busyness. When my soul is not inhabiting a wide-open space with Jesus, I have difficulty finding Him. So I ask Him to restore this broken heart. Only He can. 

I make the hard choices of dying to myself. (And it is so hard.) And He restores—creating in me new life. Again. And again.

In the quiet with God, I listen to His voice and sometimes write it down. I want my heart to be wide open and love-filled and stay close to Him. I don’t want to be distracted by everything a broken heart—and not a restored heart—would chase down, try to prove.  

---

It Is Okay

On this last page, the world
is filled with noises that 

come from many places–
from behind me years ago

and the chaos of figuring
out today’s fears.

I lie in a bed emptied
in this house, pull down

the shades and pull
at the strings in my head:

What does this mean, and 
why that and wonder 

what I will need today, for 
yesterday did I have it? 

There it is, this
pen figuring out the mess

in me, when answers
can be decided too quickly

by a mood or emotional
state rather than what is true.