The Shattered Heart

The shattering of a heart when being broken is the loudest quiet ever.

Carroll Bryant

I broke a glass the other night. With a crash it completely shattered on my bench top, into what I felt was a million pieces. Beyond repair. The mess cleaned up and the broken pieces thrown away.

Sometimes, doesn’t our heart feel like it has suffered the same fate? Shattered into pieces.

I recently rediscovered my journal that had the entries from when I was in Hospital with Oscar and newly grappling with his diagnosis of down syndrome. Back then I wrote of my shattered heart.

The world in muted colour. My heart in a million pieces like it has been smashed on the ground. That joy, excitement of a new baby gone. Dean has left for the night. I’m in hospital alone and I cry.

It is morning. Boys rush in. Excited whispers and strokes of the baby. Recording it all. My Dad holds him and blesses him – I hold onto that moment as if it was Oscar’s baptism.

I feel like I’m wearing a jumper that has pill in it. If I’m not careful it will all unravel – my life, me entirely. It’s like the edges of my life seem somewhat frayed now, torn. Inside of me is a giant scream of grief. Grief for what I thought life would be, grief for the easy days. Grief for my baby. It’s in the back of my mind at the moment – always, always. I look at Oscar, I just see Oscar and his gorgeousness, but other times I’m so aware. Grief – its shadow, at the moment, there, always lurking.

Journal Excerpt April 2016

I know I’m not alone in this, and it’s not my only experience of a heart that feels it has been shattered. None of us go through life unscathed. Our hearts all get hurt and broken. Through bereavement, through rejection or betrayal. Through circumstances or broken dreams, We all go through times as if we can tangibly feel our hearts shatter into a million pieces within us.

But unlike my broken glass, our wounds, our hearts can heal when we let God in. God knows the broken heart. As Charles Spurgeon once wrote:

“There are many sorts of broken hearts, and Christ is good at healing them all.”

We are not alone in our brokenness. He is always with us and He sees the hurts, the pain and the state of our heart.

“The Lord is close to all whose hearts are crushed by pain.”

Psalm 34:18

And a shattered heart – God can heal.

“He heals the wounds of every shattered heart.”

Psalm 147:3

I closed off that journal entry of mine with the declaration “Joy will come.”

That indeed is the truth. And my heart was healed.