Love: I love it; I hate it. It’s a word far overused with much of its meaning diminished. One of the most powerful words, it can either loosen or tighten the chains of a heart. I have been built up by love. I have been broken down by love. Love has been my companion at incredible highs and terrible lows. What a word. What a feeling - the feeling of being in love. The warmth that comes from delicately placing your heart in the hands of another. Trusting another human with something so fragile, so critical to your existence. Allowing your hearts to be knit together with another, and each second, beckoning us to draw even closer to that person. A darkened life, brightened by the smile of a heart offering itself to yours.

I’ve experienced love at its pinnacle on multiple occasions. I have felt as if another day of this life could not crawl into existence without her heart beating for mine and mine for hers. Holding a person so close, your souls seem to intertwine. Unfortunately, in my life, these experiences have been an overture to brokenness and pain. At times of loneliness, the intentional painful memory is replayed, perhaps by a song or a picture. This poke to the heart is to ensure that it can still feel. That it is still alive. That maybe, just maybe, it will find love again, that it will trust love again. What is this word that envelopes us so deeply that we cannot break free from it? What a word to leave such damaging scars and gaping wounds on our most precious of possessions. The crushing feeling of a failed love. Left standing at the beginning of a once illuminated path that is now concealed in a thick, mysterious darkness, asking, “What now?”

So we hunt for the pieces of our heart that we may never fully regain. As we scramble to pick up the pieces, they only seem to slide further from our reach. We strive to recover them, but collapse out of pure exhaustion, the pieces slipping forever away. Love directs us into a world of mystery, with many places unforeseen. Where trials and trouble wander into places we could never dream.

These feelings exposed to this parchment, etched into forever, are but a tiny fraction of what the heart of God must experience with His children. If love has touched your heart or you can relate with any word on this page, then try to imagine a love far greater. A self-sacrificing love. There is no love on Earth that can match the Love that was crucified. A Love that cleansed a broken and filthy humanity. A humanity born into sin, but delivered by Love. Each shattered heart has crafted our lives. Each piece that was lost, has been renewed through Christ. When we feel as if our hearts are dead, understand that a greater Love exists, and it is knocking at our tattered door. Joining a human heart with another human heart is temporary. Knitting a human heart with the Heart of God is eternal. We are privy to a Love that will not only replace the missing pieces, but will renew the entire heart. This Love revitalizes our souls; it causes our hearts to beat stronger, to overflow with a love that will forever change our lives. Each beat will pump more love into others. Each scar will fade into a distant memory. It will be what we call our story. Our life, lived to be an example to others that we are human too. We have lived lives that have tread through pain. Lives that have experienced the emotions, graciously given to us by the Creator. We are not perfect. We have been broken by love, but most importantly, we have been broken by the One true Love that has renewed our hearts. He has resurrected a dead and faded heart. He is the reason each beat draws us nearer to Him and to our fellow man. His love flows through us. It refills our empty hearts, spilling into the hearts of those around us.

Praise God for love! Each second of pain was shaping my heart to bring me closer to His. To experience the pain that He suffers as His children deny Him to seek solace in trivial nonsense is something I cannot imagine. But His love never fails. It never leaves us empty. It will fill what a human heart has destroyed. In my numbness, I feel Him. In my deepest sorrow, I feel Him. In my moments of soaring, I feel Him. He is with me. His hands are holding my heart. Though it may still be broken by some future event, His heart will rejuvenate mine. Darkness cannot quench His light. Glory to God!