My Heart to Break

     Apart from being a victim of violent crime or weather, there are few things in life that leave you as vulnerable as loving someone.  For that reason most of us station guards around our hearts to keep out all intruders.  That is why I was both amazed and frightened to realize I loved one of my spare sons as much as my own children.  I knew he would break my heart, not by his alcoholism or many other faults, but by leaving me.  I knew from the moment I met Lance that he was the kind who walks away.  Everything I learned about his life only made this more certain, but it was too late.  God had bonded us together, it was too late to call the guards, my wall had already been breached. When he left our house for the last time two years and four months later, it was almost a relief.  At least the waiting was over.  I knew how to lose someone I loved, that was sadly familiar territory.
     In God's recycling program experiences are never wasted.  In October 2008 I came down with Grave's disease of the thyroid, on Thanksgiving Day Lance left, in mid December I had my overactive thyroid irradiated and in a one of a kind reaction to that, began writing poetry.  By the time it became apparent I was not going to hear from Lance, I had poetry as an outlet for those feelings. I do not know the end of this story, nor even how I want it to end.  God is the author.  But I know that the God who did not waste bread, fish or a dying thyroid would never waste my love.
     There is a Billy Joel song that expresses well the vulnerability that love entails.  The first verses express his unwillingness to open his heart and be hurt, but recognition of the mistake of passing love by.  The final verse of "And So It Goes" says:

     So I will choose to be with you
     as if the choice were mine to make.
     But you can make decisions too
     and you can have this heart to break.

     And so it goes, and so it goes
     And you're the only one who knows.

     Whenever you let someone into your heart, you are giving them access from which to break it, but that pain is preferable to the deadness of never letting it be broken.  That is why God has asked us to love so many so much.  He can heal a broken heart, those with numb hearts will never see the need.  The best consolation I have found when I have lost someone is knowing that I loved them as much as I could for as long as I could.  And so it goes, and so it goes and God's the only one who knows.