A Golden Heartache

“I made her pretty and not beautiful.
I wanted her to search out her heart and learn

That it would be Me in her that would make her beautiful…
And it would be Me that would draw others to her.

I made her in such a way that she would need me.”

Perhaps life makes no sense right now and a whirlwind of emotion seem to rob you of hope and faith. Perhaps it all feels lost, broken, wasted. Perhaps you feel used, neglected, and alone. Perhaps regret and pain burn within; you cry yourself to sleep, and to breathe is to swallow blades. Perhaps all you see is black, and everything is shattered.

Oh, the familiar claws of heartache!

I remember myself as I was trapped in between the walls of this torment, my mind throbbing with questions and no one around to give me answers.  My heart was broken you see.  Every night I would fall to my knees pleading God to take away my pain, every day I would pray that God would change the circumstances because I no longer could bear the suffering. Yet, only silence screamed in response to all my pleas.

Now, looking back, I realize I had it all backwards then. I prayed the wrong prayer and recited the wrong plea. I asked for God to change my circumstances, I didn’t see then that those very circumstances were there to change me.

How does one escape the pain and the sharp claws of torture and the anxiety of sleepless nights?

I wish there was an instant cure, for it would save many girls the heartache, but there isn’t one. There is no secret formula that vaporizes despair; it’s hard, it hurts, and often we can’t avoid it. However, what we can do is shift our view and begin to see our heartache from a different perspective. We ought to look at it through the lens of God’s amazing grace.

See, God often allows circumstances and obstacles in our life to change us, to conform us to His Son and to refine us, much like the way gold is refined. We often pray the wrong prayer. We pray that God changes the circumstances around us, without realizing that these very circumstances have purpose.

Have you ever watched a parent teach a child to swim?

The child is thrown into the water. The child panics, kicks, splashes and wants out. Well my love, that water is your heartache. Right now, you are splashing and kicking, gasping for air and pleading that God would help you get over this boy, that He would smear an anesthetic over your heart and numb this relentless pain. You are panicking within, like a frightened child that wants to be pulled out of the water; a child who is tired of kicking, splashing, and gasping for air. Yet, you and I both know, that the child won’t be able to learn to swim without the water. If the parent takes the child out of the water, the child may feel satisfied for a little but he won’t be able to swim.

I know this heartache is hard for you, I know it hurts and I know you are tired. You are tired of loving, of hoping and of being rejected. You are tired of kicking and splashing and not getting anywhere. Perhaps, you feel as if you are losing breath, running out of air. But sweetheart, if God were to pull you out now, if He were to get you out of water, you would never learn to swim. This heartache you are sinking in, is refining your heart and preparing your heart for something else in the future. If you don’t go through this, you will drown in what is to come later.

The reason a child is thrown into water is to change the child; to teach the child how to swim. He or she is not thrown in to make the water go away, to change the water, or to make the water more swimmable. The water remains the same; it is the child that changes and because the child changes, he no longer fears the depths of the water.

So it is in our lives, so it is in our heartaches.

The Scripture says “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame” (Rom 5:3-5).

So thus your own suffering and heartache is not a dark punishment from God, it’s a gift that lets you see with greater clarity. It’s when you have been robbed of your vain desires and plans that He can replace them with His desires and plans. Your pain was designed and crafted in the halls of eternity as a means to change you, to wreck your selfish values, to uproot your foundation, that it could be rebuilt from the ground up. I too had such a moment, when my own heart was crushed and that which I most longed for I could not get. It was through this torture that God taught me what I most wanted was hardly good enough. It was through suffering and heartache that He began changing my character and shifting my priorities. When I look back at the savage ocean which threatened to drown me I saw that I was never in any harm, because my Father controls the oceans and would never let me drown; He was only using such a method to change me because nothing less painful would work.  So wherever you are, and whatever sorrow you are experiencing, while you learn to swim, remember that Christ is orchestrating this for your sanctification and that it is God who is at work in you. Scripture says that God is the nearest to those who are weak and broken, Psalm 34:18, and indeed Christ himself was weak and broken for you. He teaches you to swim in a dark ocean, but He himself drowned in the deepest ocean so that you may reach the highest heavens.

“I made her a little more lonesome than she would like to be…
Only because I need for her to learn and depend on Me.
I know her heart. I know that if I had not made her like this,
She would go her own chosen way
And forget Me… her Creator.”

Forward to a friend