A Heart Unraveled

It’s so cold,
But the sun keeps calling.
So I wrap up in your oversized purple sweater
And step outside.

The quiet, the stillness invites me
to simply rest in solitude for a while.
So I sit there on the front porch,
the warmth of your sweater
defending me against the cold.

And I remember.
I don’t mean to go there again.
Your final days. Hours. Minutes.
The moment of your death.

I knew that I would miss you, that I would grieve. But perhaps I wasn’t prepared for the tearing open of my soul.

Just the other day I reached my arm through the fence to latch the gate, and your sweater caught on a barb of wire. A single thread yanked out of place. Forever altered. I can’t put it back without a complete undoing.

There I sit on the front porch, missing the sounds of morning, caught in a tangle of thoughts. I replay the moments in time when the world lost the most beautiful soul. The moment when my own soul ripped wide open.

I let the tears fall, but before I slip too far into the hole in my heart, the light of the rising sun breaks through.

Send Your light and truth and let them lead me, O God. Bring me to Your holy hill, the place where Your presence dwells! (Psalm 43:3)

And I lead my heart to the truth.

I think back to another moment in time — a moment that took place 2,000 years before Holy God knit me in my mother’s womb, yet forever altered my destiny. The moment You tore the veil, God, the wall dividing me from You. And then You split the grave wide open, too.

Oh Mama, when I remember your death in light of Christ’s, everything changes. The pain still pounds like a raging drum in my heart, but my wide open soul sings at death’s undoing. One day death will be swallowed up forever.

I feel the sting of death on this side of eternity. My wounded heart beats bleeding.

But I remember.

Jesus came to put death to death. That’s why a baby boy came at Christmas. That’s why God-man lived and died. His holy heart beat bleeding. To set captives free. To rebuild ruins. To undo the pangs of death.

I lay my unraveled heart in the hands of God. I am not lost. I am longing for home. I am held, being made whole and holy. Radiant. I am laughing, singing, forever altered, because you are free.

Again I come to the altar of God, to God my greatest joy. I will praise You with my song, God! Why are you cast down, my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God! For I shall again praise Him, my Savior and my God! (Psalm 43:4-5).

Friend, where does your wounded heart beat bleeding?

Lead it back to the baby boy turned God-man whose holy heart bleeds and beats for us.

Holy God, dispatch Your light and truth. Meet us where we’re at. Lead us back to You, the Joy that exceeds the hurt. We anticipate the day You will turn every broken thing inside out and upside down. Grief will become joy! Heartbreak to hallelujahs! Pain to praise! And, we don’t even have to wait for that! Your kingdom come now in our unraveled hearts! You get all our praise!

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