Dear God,
I am having such a bad day today. I am so sad. I can't stop crying.
A lot of people say having your heart broken is like someone ripping your heart out of your chest. It is so much worse than that. Having your heart broken feels like someone trying to rip your heart out from wherever they can access it. They beat you in the stomach, they rip at your throat, they pound on your head, but eventually, ripping your heart straight out of your chest is the only option. So they do it. And then they squeeze your heart and they throw it around and step on it and tear it apart with dull fingernails. They rip it to shreds and just because it’s no longer in your body doesn’t mean you don’t feel all of this at full intensity.
The pain becomes overwhelming so you scream and cry at the hurt that is happening to you. Everywhere. Everything hurts. There is a physical pain: constant headache, burning eyes, nausea, body soreness. There is a mental pain: constant questioning of her, yourself, the situation, rethinking every nuance of every phrase said and every event passed, over thinking to the point where your mind is a constant buzz of nonstop action without any focus. You flip between hating her for hurting you and hating yourself for letting it happen.
Dealing with a broken heart is a lot like being trapped underwater. You struggle a lot at first, learning to hold your breath, often faltering and getting lungs full of water, choking until your whole body burns. You try to find the surface because you don’t want to hold your breath anymore. It’s hard and painful and you want a reprieve. But you can’t seem to find the top. And you struggle some more and your lungs cry out, you cry out, for anyone to help. But eventually you resign to the burning and the lack of oxygen and you allow yourself to just drown. When you feel like you’ve hit rock bottom, suddenly you’ll start to float up. Nature takes over and you gasp a fresh breath of air right before he kicks you down again, foot to the gut, and you fall lower. You never hit rock bottom before, because this is much worse. You struggle again and it hurts more even when you thought it wasn’t possible to. I imagine this keeps happening and I’m not sure how it’ll end. I’m still drowning, occasionally resurfacing only to be pushed further into heartache. I want to stay afloat but succumbing to the water seems to be my only option now. I am lost and there is no way I can find the surface on my own.
I come to you with my heart in my hands.
There are pieces of it that are missing, given to woman who couldn’t love me the way I needed to be loved. There are arteries with tiny holes, for all the ways I’ve convinced myself I wasn’t enough. There are veins that pump too wildly because sometimes there’s just too much emotion happening in there. There are parts that are bruised; I haven’t been so good with guarding what you’ve given me.
But my heart’s still intact; though days like today it sure doesn’t feel like it.
Today I come to you with this heart: this tired heart, this big heart, this silly heart that keeps giving itself away. I come to you with loss, with breakage, with fear for the future and how I’m ever going to let love back in. I come to you still wrestling with my feelings for a woman who I’m no longer with,
I come to you with all of me, hoping that somehow you’ll repair the damage
God, you’ve given me the gift of love. You’ve blessed me, blessed all of us humans with hearts to let others in, with the ability to connect in ways we can’t even explain or comprehend sometimes. It’s so wonderful. But sometimes I don’t understand it.
Why do you let me fall for people who maybe aren’t right for me? Why do you allow me to have such powerful emotions, such profound relationships if they’re eventually going to fail?
What’s the lesson am I supposed to be learning—To not settle until we’ve found the real thing? To look for love like your love? To be strong in loss?—and why must I learn it in such a painful way?
You brought this wonderful woman into my life. You let me fall for her, let my heart become intertwined with her,You allowed me to have feelings, deep feelings that sometimes I question looking back.
If she wasn’t right for me, God, then why did you let me love her?
I guess that’s one of the things I’ll always wonder. Maybe you brought her into my life to teach me how to let others in. Maybe she was supposed to be a blessing for a time, but also a lesson.
Maybe we were meant to be temporary, not permanent because we belong to other people. Maybe our breakup will make me stronger in time.
But God, it’s so hard to know your purpose sometimes. It’s so hard to make sense of the ache in my chest.
I come to you today with my heart in fragments. I come to you today with bitterness and anger, with doubt and frustration, with loneliness and fear. I come to you, wondering why.
God, my heart feels tired. Tired of being stepped on. Tired of being left. Tired of being taken advantage of. Tired of being given to the wrong person, only to end up empty in the end.
I need you to renew strength in me.
Please give me the strength to let go—of the past, of the pain, of her. Help me to see that my broken heart is not who I am, that I will find love again. Show me that you are here for me, and that if I trust you with my heart, you will guide me to the right person and onto the right path, no matter how far I have strayed.
God, give me the strength to let go and pursue love again. Give me the compassion to move on from what’s been lost and follow in your ways. And please, bless this woman I loved and watch over her, too. We may have gone our separate ways, but I still thank you for putting her in my life.
Maybe I won’t know the reason now, but she showed me love for a period of time, and even though my heart still aches, I know in time I will understand it was all a part of your plan.