Made For Love
A few days ago I came across a gem of a song by JJ Heller called “Unbreakable Heart”. It speaks of how we are made to love.
A few years ago I would have rather locked my heart behind closed doors and barred windows than to have loved. I was working through the emotional destruction that had occurred from my then marriage to a covert narcissist. It felt so much safer at the time to hide my heart away but I rapidly discovered that such thinking doesn’t solve anything or bring healing. It was the equivalent of putting a new paint job on a car that had no engine and no gas. Sure I might have looked fine but was I really?
Before my toxic marriage I believed I was made for love, but after? I felt too broken for anything let alone love. If someone had told me then that God had made me for love I would have despised them. I was so hurt it would have been like being told my body was made for birth when I was in the throes of labor. It wasn’t until I held my baby that suddenly every second of pain brought value to the prize. God needed me to know that same value when it came to love even if it meant going through the labor pains of heartache before that could happen.
He loved me too much to leave me in that wounded mindset and knew if I stayed in that darkness a prowling wolf would snatch me away in my weakness and shred me beyond repair. Not only that but I could not heal or grow and become all He created me to be if I never understood the healing power of His love. So my Good Shepherd gently lifted me, carried me to safety and then patiently helped me deal with each hurt until healing came.
In that process, I learned the only remedy for a broken heart is the very same thing that allowed it to be broken in the first place; love. Pure, deep abiding love that satisfies and comforts like nothing else on earth. I know what people mean now when they say they would rather have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. My life would not be the same if I had never known love.
I am so grateful God didn’t create me to have an unbreakable heart made of stone! I am so thankful He created in me a heart of flesh that could love and be loved. I have been comforted by the first hand knowledge that He is love and as the author and very essence of love, there is no end to how much He can replenish, revive and renew me whenever my heart gets wounded in the process of loving.
One of the most wonderful things God taught me through it all was that my desire to love and be loved isn’t a fairytale I am chasing or a whimsical idea. It is part of my DNA; a need He placed in me and in all of humanity. My mistake in who I married didn’t alter that gene make up or God breathed truth. He made me for love and has given me a way to carry His love to others. He defines and constantly demonstrates His love in the big and little things.
Listen to the song by JJ Heller and friend if you feel you have an unbreakable heart, I encourage you to place it in the Potter’s hands. He will give you a heart of flesh and He will show you how to tell your heart to beat again with the heartbeat of His love. You will finally know what true love is and just how much you are made to love.