Recently God used a friend to grip my heart and spur me to action. She didn’t even know it, but for me it was unmistakable. After we hung up I pondered the Holy Spirit’s nudge and reached down deep to a place I had sealed shut months before. A place I had never wanted to visit again.
Sometimes we have to rip open old wounds to heal shattered places.
In faith, I heeded His prompting and reached out. Hands shaking, I waited. Her words came back: “Can we just start over?”
I cried the yes in droplets over my keyboard and blessed my sweet God for His redemption that sometimes comes through unwitting messengers. I blessed Him again for her openness to His words.
In that moment, it no longer mattered whether the whole thing made sense or not or who was right and who was wrong and why it all happened.
Because love…love always makes sense.
It redeems what we’ve lost, repairs what was broken, mends hearts separated by misunderstanding.
Only sometimes we go after truth at the cost of feelings, and although truth is a worthy treasure, sometimes in this life answers aren’t so black and white. Sometimes, because we are fallible humans, what really happened isn’t so clear.
Sometimes we really don’t know. And I think maybe there are times when that needs to be enough. When we just leave it all in God’s lap and let Him sort out the past while we look ahead and build the present—this lovely gift of relationship—in the here and now.
Love doesn’t know stop signs. Sometimes we falter, and sometimes we get caught up in pain and confusion, but love is always waiting. Love never fails.
It’s us. We are the ones who fail one another. We neglect, we say too much or too little, we misunderstand, we make assumptions. We forget to believe the best in one another and life gets crazy and in the middle of it all we lose what was really important. We lose us.
I do know this: It is worth every bit of faith and courage it takes to reach out across the chasm to close the rip. We swallow hard, extend a trembling hand, and pray.
We trust that a hand will reach back, if not now then sometime, and what was torn will be made whole again by the one who wore the holes pounded deep for all of us imperfect ones who tear at His heart every day. We cry out for His sweet grace that fills our empty places, and feel His hand once wounded reaching back to heal.
We wrap our fingers tight with His and breathe our thanks and try harder next time to never let the hurt happen in the first place. We live a little kinder and more understanding and less careless. We live with an intentional gratitude that reminds us with every breath that this life with all its wildness is a gift we cannot take for granted—at least not without paying dearly.
We cling to the Love that never leaves us and we pray hoping that because we are His, by His grace ours will hold fast, too.
Because His kind of love never lets goodbye mean forever.
And you, dear friend? Is there a place you’ve closed that maybe by His power you could reopen and heal?
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A Write Where It Hurts post
A Beautiful Life 
I really wished I could say what you said that, “Because love…love always makes sense”. “It redeems what we’ve lost, repairs what was broken, mends hearts separated by misunderstanding”.
But I can’t, and it’s very complicated.
My wife has very toxic and irresponsible family members. My wife and I have been Christians since our teens, and we are now in our early 50’s. The relationship they have with us, but mostly with my wife, is fine as long as we comply with their selfish, greedy wants. When I ask questions when they make demands or I just flat out say no…..well, to be blunt, all hell break loose. As a Christian and the husband, I take my role in our home as the spiritual head of the house very seriously. My wife wasn’t able to have any children….that’s another story!
Last year three of my wife’s family members hurt and betrayed my wife so badly that she lost her temper. I’ve been married to this wonderful, kind, loving lady for 32 years and I’ve only seen her get angry just one other time. She went between tears and anger for about a week, then she said that it hit her all of a sudden just how one-sided the relationship is between her family and her. She said, “they really don’t care what happens to us or me, our marriage or our lives as long as we keep doing for them”. I told her, “Honey, I’ve been saying that for 30 years but you were not listening”.
As Christians we rebuild the bridges in the hopes that the relationship will get better. But as usual, they burn down the bridge yet again. This has been happening for 30 years, and to be honest, we’ve ran out of materials and the will and desire to rebuild the bridges any more.
My wife and I pray for these family members twice a day, but sometimes, the best way to express love is to walk away and give them over to God.
I am so deeply sorry for the pain you and your wife have been living through, and continue to live through. My heart breaks for you. Scripture tell us, “for as much as it lies with you, be at peace with everyone”. Which in my way of thinking, means to do your best and leave the rest up to God to work out. You are right: we can only do so much. And yes, sometimes love must happen with some distance between.
I don’t believe love is always up close and personal, and I don’t believe healthy boundaries are a bad thing. I think in some cases (like yours seems to be), if we aren’t careful we can enable destructive behavior by allowing it to become acceptable. There has to be a way to show people that we are worth more than what we are being treated like, to value ourselves in ways that says gently but firmly, “I love you, but I am not called to be your punching bag (physical, verbal, or emotional).
Please know that even now I am praying for you and your wife, dear friend. I am grateful that the two of you have such a strong relationship that the family’s treatment hasn’t turned you on one another. There is a lot to be said for that. I wish you both love and comfort and God’s perfect peace.
I’m fiercely protective of my wife even to the point of attempting to protect her from herself by just being honest and straightforward and telling her the truth. That’s hasn’t always been effective! The last incident with her family caused the rose-colored glasses she was wearing to get knocked off and she finally saw the truth. I hated seeing it happen, but I rejoiced when she not only saw the truth, but finally accepted it. For too many years she accepted the destructive behavior from her family members against her for the simple bighearted, emotional God-given need she had for her family. It started getting bad with her family shortly after my wife had a miscarriage of a set of twins. The pain of the loss and the trauma caused her to cling to her family members and they, sadly, took full advantage of that in many selfish and greedy ways.
Since the last incident, we prayed for her to receive great wisdom and discernment, like it says in James 1:5 -“If any of you lacks wisdom let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him”. Today she is a changed lady. She wields powerful wisdom and discernment and discretion and her priorities have changed. Now she fully knows that family comes first—family meaning– our Lord ,our marriage and our relationship together. And that really is the way it is meant to be. Some people may not agree with that in it’s general sense, but since we have no children we have to support each other no matter what.
My wife is an amazing lady, she forgives so easily but she is having difficulty dealing with the aftermath and the pain they have caused her. We will get through this and we greatly appreciate your prayers and encouragement.
On a side note, I bumped into the Write Where It Hurts website last year, and your posting there. I saw the website from a link posted on Twitter. I enjoy reading your blog posts here and at the Write Where It Hurts site as well. I share what you write with my wife all the time. I enjoy seeing how ladies respond to adversity through the Lord and their unique prospective because, as a man sometimes we don’t understand. I believe full-well I can learn and be encouraged by your faith, and I share that with my wife. To me, faith is faith, and it crosses the genders lines so easily that I believe we can all learn and be encouraged by each other no matter the gender.
Thank you for your wonderful writing and encouragement……and for listening to me.
God Bless.
John, your encouragement means more than I can word. The relationship you have with your wife is a Godly example of the way we are called to leave and cleave–to hold onto one another. I write often about how when life happens, it happens TO Steve and me, not BETWEEN us. We face everything together as one, and that has made all the difference. You and your beloved give us all hope and inspire us all to continue living in a three-stranded cord as God intends.
I am delighted that you have been blessed by the writings at Write Where It Hurts. Our writing team there is amazing and I dearly love working with such beautiful ladies. I look forward to sharing more writings with you and your wife through the WWIH ministry, and would love to have your wife peek in and connect with us if she is interested.
I wish you and your beloved God’s very best, dear friend. I am enjoying this conversation and will share the heart-smiles with my husband, who encourages me the way you encourage your wife. I consider us both deeply blessed.