The Gift of Grief

I just took a walk down to the local beach – 10 minutes away from my house. While there, a woman who is a long-distance friend of mine, messaged me and I messaged her back. I got to thinking how I usually only respond to her texts. I have only rarely initiated. And I never provide her any details of my life. This is unusual for me. I have historically been prone to share with others the details of my life. But I have not shared with her even the fact that I’ve been divorced now for a week. And I have no inkling to share that with her, nor really any other detail about my life.

As I walked up the road toward home I wondered why this has been so with this particular friend. The answer came quickly. After all, this isn't something I haven't pondered before. I have known the answer to this question. But it seemed to sink in to me more deeply than ever before. The reason I don’t share intimate details of my life with the opposite sex is because my heart has been demolished.

This sounds hyperbolic and maybe it is. But I wonder if the reason I am unwilling to share the inmost parts of my heart, or what remains of it, is because there seems to be nothing left of it. I think there has been so much devastation and shock to my heart that there is nothing that would make me want to expose it to the elements again. I cannot even imagine when it may be ready again.

Someday I believe it will be. But I believe it will be years – maybe many years. For I am still reeling in shock. The blow I took was mighty. I think that I am unable to comprehend the greatness of it. It feels surreal.

The only evidence I can see arises from my behaviors. Such is my complete and utter lack of interest in establishing relationships with the opposite sex. There is simply zero – maybe even negative – interest in giving my heart away.

For where Is my heart? I'm not even sure.

I try to understand what happened. I try to put my arms--the arms of my understanding--around the idea that I am no longer with her. I am no longer with my wife--who is not now my wife. All I get back is an error message. There is no computation. It's well beyond me. I think I have only once before been at such a complete loss from my world heaving and hoing. It was when I denied God and actually doubted His literal existence.


Bad move.

That rocked my world so much that I admitted myself into the psychiatric unit of the local hospital. I was 12 years into working my way back from that devastation when my wife who is not my wife handed me this one. I still had not recovered fully from the tumult and upheaval denying God had caused my inner world. I was changed in a profound and unfriendly way from the loss of that reality back in 2005.

Ironically, this new devastation got me right with God real quick and He and I have never been better. That’s why I believe this was all according to His plan for me.

Because He’s a healer.

And because He’s a healer I know there will come a day when I will be healed. Even a day when I will rejoice at what I now see only as devastation. And in that day I will have a pure heart of gold.

But for now all I see is fool’s gold. And I am the fool.

I never knew foolishness could hurt so bad.