"Write Hard and Clear about what Hurts"

9/29/14

            Ernest Hemmingway once said, “Write hard and clear about what hurts”. Take the time to truly let your heart speak. Let the pain you feel be delicately placed words that fill a page. Don’t let it swallow you up. It’s easier said than done.

            Pain is tricky. Sometimes its physical and you bleed. Other times it’s emotional, but you still bleed. Emotional pain makes your soul bleed. This kind of pain is hard to articulate clearly. One moment you feel an overwhelming sadness and the next you are enraged. It’s like being thirteen years old again. If you drop your yogurt on the floor at it spills, your eyes will well up with tears. It’s silly really, that something so miniscule that has nothing to do with the real pain still produces an emotional response.

            It’s also strange and infuriating how all of life’s messes begin to connect. The original source of pain seeps its way into other weak areas of life and makes you feel awful. Getting mad at someone tail gating you should not relate to your heartache, but it does. And there is no explanation why.

            Heartache is difficult to understand. You hardly ever see it coming, and when it does come, it hits you like broken glass shards. Sharp, deep, and pain all over. It stings and bleeds and requires stitches. And like all wounds, it takes time to heal.

            But how much time? How do you know when enough pain is enough? When do you decide to pick yourself up and walk on? When do you begin to feel like yourself again?

            In reality, it’s not the stitches that heal a wound. It is the cells of the body coming together to mend the skin, the stitches are just a form of support. It’s the same with heartache. You may have friends and family around you for support, but the only thing that’s really going to heal you is the love of Christ, the savior living inside you. He is the true healer of human souls. He gives life and is close to the broken hearted.

            Heartache is even harder to understand because in the moments when you think you should be enveloped in sadness and grief; glimmers of hope somehow still find their place in the darkness. Words of a song bring a little peace, and laughter at a joke lightens the weight of pain, even if just for a second. That is Jesus. I know it is. I think that’s how He shows that He knows your pain, personally. He understands rejection because He himself was rejected by His own people. He suffered and knows my suffering. He holds the depths of my soul in His hands. On the days when I am shaking in fear, He is beside me. He might seem quiet sometimes, but he is speaking. He may feel far but He is holding me in his arms.

            I may not understand why heartache happens or how to overcome it, but I do know that God is with me. Through every high and every low, He is with me. I will forever praise God in my thunderstorms. I will cling to His promises. And even though I am afraid, I will trust that he knows what he is doing. The joy of the Lord shall be my strength. He will sustain me in my weakness.

            My wounds may still be bleeding and held together by stitches, but He is working. He is working on renewing my spirit and changing my heart. He is healing me, but in His timing. He is letting me find Him with the rain pouring down and the thunder rolling. He is placing people in my path to be my stitches. And He himself is binding up my wounds and bringing the healing. He is bigger than any circumstance, any feeling of doubt, and any burst of anger.

            Heartache may demand to be felt, but Jesus feels it with me. They say time heals all wounds, and maybe it helps, but Jesus is the true healer of my soul.

            I cannot write hard and clear about what hurts and not include His love. Because you can’t know how deeply He loves you until you see those glimmers of hope in the darkness.

            Until the day I find myself in a place of normalcy again, I will cling to those little glimmers of hope. I will take the small pieces of joy that I find because I know they are from Him. I will take Jesus before I take happiness. I will write hard and clear about the pieces of Christ I find amidst my heartache.