Treasures of a Healing Heart

When the hopes and dreams we have tried to bury come back in a sparked memory or converstaion with a friend we haven't seen...It is hard to know what to do...How to handle the heart when it aches again with longing we don't have answers for. 

My heart gasps silently in my chest, my stomach flops and panic whips through me. Tears wonder if they should come or go.  I plaster a smile to my face and try to be honest, try to be real but confusion sweeps through my mind.  So I just hold still.  "Be silent." I command my heart. "Stay down." I say to hope. The smile I force is big, but the pain in my eyes is real. 

In a fog the conversation ends and I walk away dazed daring to hope,... not daring to hope. Wishing to stay talking because even just talking about him a little bit lets me feel like we are still together like all the pain we both are going through isn't real and forever has a chance even though its all gone. 

Then I sitdown, my breath starts to come again.  The world starts to all rush in, but I am trapped in your memories again spinning through my head like a carnival ride, trying to get through to the other side where I remember why I said good bye to my heart and walked away from you. 

One step I take.  One deep breathe and a ragged prayer.  The seizuring of my heart starts to stop, but then it spasms again.  I am a woman knocked down on the ground by my broken heart and I decide to stay.  Not because I will go back or have forgotten the past or can't move on, but because here there is something to see.  "Don't run", my heart says to me.  "Look at me"  and I see the beauty of the pain, the shattered fragments again, lying like rose petals on a sandy beach.  There beside a broken shard a hand reaches down and picks up each part, not one is lost.  My heart looks at me in agony as it is gathered in gentle hands, a million pieces not knowing how to stand. 

I sit and dig my hands into the sand, my finger tips feel the moisture, damp from the waves of the ocean of tears we've wept.  Tears, not just mine, I feel his too.  The man with the shards of my heart looks at me so tenderly, compassionately and his tears fall onto our hearts held seperately yet somehow together.  "Someday" the man whispers in a breath like a gentle summer breeze "You will both understand."

There is no magic here.  No quick restart. just a place to start again.  A place to sit and hope, not for the beating or twining of my heart with his.  Not for forgiveness or even a fresh start, those I have though I cannot see them now.  But to hope again in the the healer who holds all things, knows all things. Trust in the process He is taking me through to let the agony of being renewed wash over me in all its grace and learn to beat in the truth of His hands. 

Waves lap the sand and the setting sun washes over me.  Treasures of memories I let slip away dance across the tossing waves.  Each was beautiful in their way.  I sit watching them all play out for me the tears, the joy, the agony.  Before I could not bear to watch but now I smile with tears.  I see the man who gathered my heart walking out on the waves placing each sparkling story into a treasure chest for me.  "These are a part of your treasures."  my heart begins to weep again accepting that my past is being healed that, all that was beautiful never has to be forsaken. 

I look into the treasure chest he has gathered for me and I fall into a night sky, the constellation that was us....that will always be us,  Immortalized in the pages of our history.   SO much good, so much beauty set for all to see. 

Then I am back, in a room full of people.  My heart beats true.  The pain is gone,  though it will return with thoughts of you.  Each breath brings a smile as hope returns.  Hope not for what was or will be, but hope in He who holds the stars in His hands.