Healing your broken heart

I was not a nice person in High School.  I actually was a very mean, cold hearted, judgmental person, who would let you know exactly who you are and what you should do. 

I am not proud at all of my behavior as teenager or in my early twenties.  I was a really mean person, but more importantly, I was a really broken person.  I was emotionally broken, physically broken, mentally broken, sexually broken and spiritually broken. 

When I say to you I was a broken person, I am speaking truth.

I can also say that I didn’t recognize it, or understand it.  I just knew I wasn’t happy and felt as if I never would be happy. 

I personally tried to drink the emptiness away, the loneliness the feelings of inadequacy that I had felt for as long as I could remember.  I did everything I could to replace that feeling, or to make something else about me more important, more relevant and acceptable, but again, nothing did.

I was probably around sixteen the first time I tried to commit suicide.  I was distraught, and felt like a stranger not only in my family but in my own skin.  I felt like I didn’t belong and that I never would.  I felt like I was never just going to be happy, content, at peace with who I am and what was happening in my life.

I wanted out… I wanted peace, but more than anything I wanted to be loved!

Needless to say the first attempt didn’t take, so they say, and thankfully so, but the ramifications of the attempted suicide were worse than my life before that. 

Now, I was being punished by my mom for trying to kill myself, and note to parents out there, seriously, one of the worst thing you can do to your child who is crying out for help enough, so much so, that ending their life seems like the only way out, is to punish them.   Trust me; they are punishing themselves more than you ever will be able too.

There was a new low.  There was a new shame, a new embarrassment, and oddly enough yes, another failure.  I couldn’t even succeed at ending my life, so the words, the phrases, the rejections and the lack of love must have all happened for a reason, if I can’t even do this right!

This all added to the rage that filled me.  The anger that was ticking inside of me so loudly that it was like a clock in my head counting down every second, of every day.  There was such a void and absence in my life that even I can’t explain, because rarely do I allow myself to feel that dark space.

I was so angry for so many years… I had resentment against everyone for so many years… and I bought into the lies from satan for so many years…

I wasted so many years…

All of these feelings came rushing back to me tonight when I was reading Matthew 22:37-39.   The feelings of not feeling loved, or wanted, not feeling validated in my thoughts or in the dark recesses of my mind understanding why I was feeling the way I felt. 

There was a reason why I felt the way I felt, there is still a reason why I feel the way I feel, but that doesn’t mean it had to be my identity.  It doesn’t have to be my personality; it doesn’t have to be what keeps me chained to the past, without hope of a future.

Matthew 22:37-39 And He replied to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (intellect) (38) This is the great (most important, principal) and first commandment. (39) And a second is like it; You shall love your neighbor as (you do) yourself.

Imagine how wonderful this would have been to have read, heard or experienced as that young child wishing for death to come and take them.  Imagine, being able to be the person who speaks these words to them, or better yet, shows them.

Words… while they are powerful and are able to change a moment, a lifetime, a story, they also can be empty containers that are just left in the air for you to receive.  They can be empty little messages in a time when you truly need for your words and your actions to align.

Jesus is telling us, as He has always told us, that we are to love the Lord our God with all of our hearts and mind, with everything we have, we should love Him and honor Him.   He should always be first, in everything we do.   From the smallest of things to the largest of things, we should always consider God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. 

Our decisions should not be based on emotions or the way the wind is blowing that day, as we are to be adhering to a higher power.  We are to be following the ways of the One who knows the way, not our emotions.

The second thing we are to do, the next most important thing we are to adhere too, which is referred to as, and a second is like it.  Which is saying that it is similar, it is the same, they share a common thread, and you must do the one so you can do the other?

You must love one another, as you love yourself.

You see why you need to be able to love God with all that you have?  You see why, because you were going to have to love someone else as much as you love yourself.

Now, if you were like me, or like that sixteen to twenty-five year old person I was once, that loving others how you love yourself thing, was going to be hard.  Why you ask? Because, I didn’t love myself, so the anger that I felt, and took out on everyone around me was justified because I was giving them, what I gave myself.

I am a prime example how you can’t do commandment number two; without commandment number one.

When we try to love people, and we don’t feel loved, or valuable, we are going to fail miserably and possible cause more damage than there already was.  We are going to misrepresent God and definitely misrepresent ourselves.

You must understand that you are loved, to some extent.  You must accept that your purpose, your being, your originality, the fact that you are breathing means something. 

There is a reason why you were created!!!!

There is a purpose, a great and wonderful purpose, for you, just the way you are. 

All of the things you hate about yourself, you would like to change about your appearance, or your abilities, God loves.  He gave them to you.

He created you in His image…perfect!

When you are unable to accept any of the statements made above, you are in no shape to give the love that you don’t yet receive away.

One of the things I love about God is the fact that He actually walked His walk.  God wasn’t or isn’t just lip service.  He isn’t the person telling you how you should behave, He is the behavior.  He created the Laws and He has shown us exactly how to do them by giving us Jesus.

Jesus is the love that we are told to love with all of our abilities.  That is Jesus.  Jesus is all of that and so much more.  He is all the goodness in this world.  All of the possibilities, the hope and the blessings that is in this world are Jesus.

When you begin to allow your mind to shut off and your heart to expand enough to understand that this Man, came to earth and died a horrific death for you, worse than any you have ever heard or seen in a movie, and He did it willingly, for you, it’s really hard to not allow that love to shine on you.

It’s hard to not say, wow, if this Man could take the beatings, the lashings, the starvation, the hunger, the ridicule, the mockery, the nakedness, the shame and the list goes on and one, but if He could do all of this, for me… ME, how can I not allow Him to love me!

It’s like the best gift anyone has ever given to you, and you deny it because your mind doesn’t understand why someone would give it to you. 

That’s Jesus!!  He’s the best gift that we ever could have been given, and He is the best gift we ever can receive. 

Jesus took that person I was telling you about, the one that I used to be, and has changed her into the person I am today.  The person who, while still has a long way to go, cries for the pain of others.  Hurts for the hurts of her fellow man, and mourns for the destruction in this dark world.  My spirit aches for the people who don’t know God and for the ones who do, but don’t understand, just like I didn’t understand.

I knew that my life wasn’t good, it wasn’t happy, it wasn’t what it was meant to be, but I didn’t know how to make the changes to feel what I knew I should be feeling.

Now I do…and now I can share that knowledge, and His name is Jesus Christ.

When you allow a little bit of God into your life, you will begin to see the love break through your hard heart.  You will begin to feel worthy again, wanted again, viable again, and loved maybe again, or for the first time.

When you take the time to open your heart up to God, to His son Jesus Christ, you will begin to open your heart up to who you are.  You will tap into the real you, the core you, the person you were destined to be, and it will feel awesome!

I am so happy to know that I am not that angry person anymore.  That young person who thought that ending her life was the best way out, she is gone, and in her place is a person who loves God and learning to love herself.

While I still feel pain, hurt, anger, disappointment, all those things that I have always felt, I know that I am not those things.  I know that my identity is not in those emotions, but my identity is in my Creator, my Father, and my Redeemer and in my God. 

This walk, this journey, this life that we are living, it’s not always easy but I can promise you, if you come to God and place your broken heart into His loving hands, I promise you, He will heal your heart.   He will mend your wounds and He will strengthen your soul.   He will make loving Him easy and in all of this He will make loving other people an easier thing to do as well.