When my heart breaks, what do I do? To whom or from where do I first run and seek comfort, protection, warmth, love?
Today, my darling husband and I received a text with enormously distressing news. A text filled with bitterness, slander, ungodly opinions given as facts—falsehood presented as truth and poison poured into an open and already painful wound. A wound that has never been given a chance to recover before more poison is poured into it and thus overruns it.
When a loved one professes Christ, yet considers it a small thing (if he considers it at all) to sin against God; confesses this is wrong, yet remains apathetic, and therefore, continues to sin without cause, what is one to do?
All I had the strength to do, was to cry out, “LORD, help me!” And immediately, the Holy Spirit put Psalm 121 in my mind. So immediately, I opened the Word of my Lord, and this is what I received from Him,
In my distress I called to the LORD,
and He answered me.
Deliver me, O LORD,from lying lips,
from a deceitful tongue.
What shall be given to you,
and what more shall be done to you,
you deceitful tongue?
A warrior’s sharp arrows,
with glowing coals of the broom tree!
Woe to me, that I sojourn in Meshech,
that I dwell among the tents of Kedar!
Too long have I had my dwelling
among those who hate peace.
I am for peace,
but when I speak, they are for war!
When my darling husband read me the text, my heart sank. My mind fumbled about as it tried to keep up with, and make sense of, the slander and bitterness that was hurled at me…by someone who was once close to me. Someone I once held dear. Someone I have and still do love with all my heart. Someone I pray daily for God’s mercy to bring him to truth.
So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.
~2 Timothy 2:22-26, ESV
Every slander does not need to be addressed. Every emotionally-established and unbiblically-based notion does not require a response.
So to answer my question: What am I to do when my heart breaks? I remember and obey what my great and merciful and perfectly loving God and Father recorded in Psalm 121:1-2, “I lift my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.” And I will wait on the LORD.
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