My Fragile Heart

I used to look for love in all the wrong places.

The Beginning

I often look back at my old photos on my camera roll. Photos dating back three years, two years, and photos of myself taken just last year. I analyse my face, my body, the clothes I wore, my hair length, and the colour of my nail polish, trying to make sense of who the girl I see on my screen is. Lately, my brain has come up with the brilliant and torturous idea of ruminating on my past. Scenes from this old movie flash as I daydream: Conversations I had with people I don’t talk to anymore, places I haven’t visited in a while, houses I forgot the addresses of, and jackets I borrowed and gave back. It all plays on repeat as I brush my teeth, make my bed, drive my car, and wash the dishes. It is moments like these in which I feel the furthest away from God. I look at photos of myself in my first year of varsity and can see the pain and yearning I had in my eyes. As long as I’ve lived, and I’m sure 90% of the human population can relate, I have had this desire to be absolutely and unconditionally loved by someone. I believed that the only way for me to be loved in that way was for me to earn it. So I gave everything of myself to the people around me, but specifically to the boy that I was in a relationship with for three years. When I say I gave everything, I mean I truly gave him everything of myself. By the time he left me, I was wrung dry and left to hang. And even though I had practically bared my soul to him, I never felt like what he gave me was enough. I had a desire for more. I believe that this desire for more also stemmed from the fact that this boy just did not, and does not, have the capacity and capability to hold me in the way that I need to be held. Because of this, I started to believe something was wrong with me. I was told that I am too sensitive, that I am too loud, that I am high-maintenance, that I am difficult to love, that my love is suffocating, imprisoning, overbearing, and burdensome. I am not trying to paint myself in an innocent light; I know that I am not perfect, and there were many ways I could have treated this boy better, but I am starting to believe that most of the time, I was only reacting to what he was doing and what he was saying. Fun fact of the day: I am not crazy, and I actually am deserving of love!

The Heartbreak

So, quite unsurprisingly, he left. When I say that this was the most painful and heart-aching thing to happen to me to date, I mean it. The only way that I can describe it is that this relationship was, what felt like at the time, my purpose and calling in life. I know that sounds extreme, but stay with me. I made this relationship my idol. When this idol was removed, I did not know how to exist anymore. I could not comprehend who I was without this person in my life. And I want to thank God for removing this idol, because it was one of the biggest blockades that was separating me from knowing Jesus Christ. So lately, I have been looking back at the girl I was before I knew God and how different she is from me. And I feel so sad because she thought love was something she had to earn. I think about how her bones ached with a desire to know and feel more than what was given to her in this relationship. And I realise now that the love that I was searching for cannot be found in that boy, or any other relationship for that matter. The love I had been searching for can only be found in Jesus Christ.

My First Prayer

Shortly after this guy broke up with me, I was so lost and so desperate, I started to pray. The pain filled my chest and consumed my entire being, and I did not know what else to do. But I knew that people prayed when they were asking for a miracle. I did not have a relationship with Jesus at this time. I did not know who I was praying to. I was just willing to do anything to feel even a little less of the pain. But through prayer, and because I started surrounding myself with people who do have a relationship with God, my heart began to open up to Jesus. One day, I just surrendered everything. I realised that it was not possible for me to carry all this pain, all this betrayal, and all this abandonment upon my own shoulders. I asked God to take that up for me, and I just had to have faith that I could be healed. My healed heart is a testimony to God’s faithfulness and grace. I found love in a Lord who does not abandon, does not need me to do anything to earn his grace, is so rich in love and kindness, is merciful, and despite my wretched sin, chose to die for me.

As I scroll through my photos from just a few months ago, I can see how much I needed to know a love like this. I used to try so hard to dig this love out of people. I did not realise that the only love that could ever complete me is the love of Jesus. Now, this is not to say that I do not desire love from other human beings, I do, of course. I am just saying that the Lord’s love is unlike anything a human could ever display. As a Christian, it is my duty and calling to try my very best to emulate God’s love and to share that with other people, but I am not God, so I will always fall short. If I could show just even a fraction of the love that God has given me to someone today, then I have done well.

What I Know Now

My perception of love has changed now that I am a Christian. To love someone in a way that is desperate, obsessive, and demanding is not loving. For the true definition of love, we can look at 1 Corinthians 13:4-7:

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

My whole life, I have been searching for this love, and I have finally found it. I have not perfected it, and I am still learning to love in this way. But my God loves me so. And that is the sweetest thing.

I have been writing my whole life. I started in Grade Two with writing and illustrating storybooks for my friends. Now this has evolved into sharing my writing through Substack. I now pray that the Lord uses my writing as a vessel to share His glory. Okay, so I found something that I wrote when I was seventeen. This is relevant because just a few minutes ago, I found a letter I wrote to this boy a few hours before he broke up with me on my Google Docs account. Not deleted. Unedited. I read it. It has been over six months now, and I could not recognise the person who wrote this. To share this letter would be too personal, but please know that the amount of love and undignified desperation I expressed in that letter makes me so overwhelmed. As I was reading what I wrote in November, all I could think about was that I still have that love contained within me. It has never left me. I still have that ability to love so deeply. But the love has changed, it has moved on, and it is no longer reserved for just one person. Because that was what I was doing for so long; all the love I had in me was poured into this one person, and ironically, it was never ever enough. This is a short excerpt from the letter I wrote in November on the Google Doc:

Please let me come home? Please will you open your door? I want to lay my head in your lap so you can stroke my hair. I want to pull myself into a fetal position, and I want you to sit with me. Please hold my hand. I’ll bang and kick the door until you notice me. Why can’t you see me? Why can’t you see me?

I swear this is tied in with something I wrote when I was seventeen. Between the time I was seventeen and twenty, I could not imagine a life without this boy by my side. What I’ll say now is this: To lose him was the biggest blessing of my life, because losing him led me to Jesus Christ, whose love completes me, and is unconditional. Nothing this boy could have ever done could have saved me, and that is through no fault of his own; he is not my Saviour. My heart now rests in the heart of Jesus. Okay, back to what I wrote when I was seventeen. I found something I wrote on the 24th of May 2021, just a few weeks before I met this boy:

At seventeen years old, I knew something I had to remind myself of at twenty-one. If I had so much love just for that one person, I surely have the ability to give that love to all those around me. I know now that this capacity to accommodate people, and make a home for them in my heart, is not by my own power or doing, but it is given to me by God. I know now that this gift of being able to love so deeply was never meant for just one person, but for all. It would be wasteful to just love one person like this. My heart, despite its fragility, wants to know you so deeply. It is not uncommon for me to write about love. If you read any of my pieces, they echo this theme of love. Perhaps my writing is redundant, but I think this is because the Lord does, and will continually, reveal things to me about love, until my dying breath. Love lasts forever, and it is the greatest of all things. I know this to be true. I do not think it is possible to exhaust myself of writing about this. My life, because it now revolves around the Lord, revolves around love. And because the Lord loves all, I will love all.

Lord, I want to love like You love. I hope that throughout my life, I am able to touch people’s hearts in the way that You have touched mine. To have met You is the greatest treasure, and I pray I never take this for granted. How could I ever deny you? You have made me complete through Your love. Amen.