Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Full of cliches and feelings

Have you ever had a friend who meant so much to you that you would do anything for them? Have you ever had a friend who broke your heart?  And no matter how much you tried to change, and make things okay, they just left the pieces of your broken heart lying there on the floor...

How do you recover from that?

There are a limited number of times the heart can mend itself.  With each breaking, the pieces of your broken heart get smaller and harder to put back together.  And yet, foolish heart, it continues to reach out to the same thing that it knows will only break it again.

But the thing that does the breaking is really just a person with a broken heart of their own, trying to put their pieces back together and somehow managing to shatter you again in their clumsy attempts at reconstruction.

My faith tells me to forgive.  Jesus says seven times seventy -- not a literal 490 times, more like unlimited times -- and I can forgive.  But how many times am I supposed to let myself get walked on and mistreated? My heart, the eternal optimist, rises like helium-filled glass balloon at the faintest glimmer of hope, and is dashed to the ground again before the hopeful glimmer can become a real light.