Achy heart, breaky soul
by
Chaplain Kathie
But don't tell my heart, my achy breaky heart
I just don't think it'd understand
And if you tell my heart, my achy breaky heart
He might blow up and kill this man
Achy Breaky Heart
When we hear God breathed life into Adam, we tend to forget Adam was already formed from the earth,
Genesis 2:7
the LORD God formed the man [a] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
,,,so the image of God is not flesh and bones.
God does not have flesh growing old or becoming ill. God does not have bones that can be broken. God is, as always and always shall be, the same as He created within each of us, the same image as our soul. We cannot see the soul but we can see the results of the soul at work within us. We can see it when we love and rejoice just as surely as we can see it when we are in pain and grieve.
The soul within us came from God and there is a connected relationship we have with Him. When we pray, our soul is crying out to God. I'm not talking about repeating Bible verses or memorizing the Creed. I'm talking about when our souls reach out to heaven for help or offer a prayer of thanks when no words can measure it properly.
We live subjected to events in our lives and subjected to the actions of others. We hear them say things that twist around what we thought we knew to the point where we can question everything we believed. On the flip side, they can feed us and restore faith, hope, remind us we are worthy of being loved and that we matter to someone out there.
When we do the right thing, do what our souls call us to do on this planet and suffer for it, we wonder where God is. Did we do it wrong? Didn't we do what He wanted? Wasn't our "heart" in the right place even though our body was in the wrong one? So many questions fueled by our suffering after doing something unselfishly. How could God want us to do something and then walk away leaving us on our own, letting us fall and suffer without helping us? So we call out to God again as our heart aches for help, for answers, for directions, and perhaps above all, to know we do still matter to Him.
We call out to God over and over and over again while our lives fall apart searching for one sign God hears us but there is only silence. Then we can't feel anything greater than the pain in our heart and we pull back from God. Much like a relationship with an unfaithful friend, we believe we are better off without them but we end up wanting to know what we did wrong, why we were left to suffer when they mattered so much to us, we do the same thing with our relationship with God. Our soul pulls away from God and the connection between us breaks. We are lost, feeling hopeless as a part of us feels as if it is falling so far down into the pit of despair there is no hope of anything getting better.
People we love say the wrong thing at the wrong time trying to make us feel better. When what they say fails to provide relief, they then end up telling us how wrong we are feeling the way we do. As if that's supposed to be helpful? When Job was trying to tell his friends he didn't do anything wrong, they started out comforting him but soon they ended up blaming him so sure he had done something wrong and God was in fact punishing him. Job suffered from what was happening to him just as much as he suffered from what was happening around him but what made him suffer more was losing the connection he felt to God.
Job 1
Prologue
1 In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. 2 He had seven sons and three daughters, 3 and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.
4 His sons used to take turns holding feasts in their homes, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. 5 When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would send and have them purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, "Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts." This was Job's regular custom.
Job's First Test
6 One day the angels [a] came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan [b] also came with them. 7 The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?"
Satan answered the LORD, "From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it."
8 Then the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil."
9 "Does Job fear God for nothing?" Satan replied. 10 "Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. 11 But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face."
Job lost everything and his friends ended up walking away. Soon even his wife couldn't stand it anymore and told him to curse God so that he could die. God ended up restoring everything Job lost plus more but had that been any one of us, we would be remembering that pain and wondering when the next time would come when God was going to test us again. We know how unfair that was to Job but what we know and what we believe in times like this end up at war with each other. This is what is behind the notion "God only gives me what I can handle" meaning God sends all the bad into our lives, or allows it. We get it all twisted around so nothing makes sense. How can God love me at the same time He pulls a temper tantrum against me and sends me all kinds of pain and loss and grief? Satan managed to focus in on Job but we're not Job and nowhere near as perfect in our faith as Job was. We only have to deal with what other people do, say and fail to do. The tiny voices invade their own soul and cause them to ignore God's calling them to help, ignoring the words they need to say and take the actions they need to take in order to fill our requests to God.
The truth is, God is sending us what we need to get through it, to make us stronger, to make us able to ask others for help, just as much as He is wanting us to help someone else in times of need only we can understand. Do you hear Him? Is He telling you that "this too will pass" and your pain will be replaced by rejoicing? Is He telling you that He loves you even if you feel as if there is nothing worthy of love within you? Did you ever feel loved by God or someone else? Then there was something worthy of being loved there once and thus, is still there since your soul cannot vanish as much as you try to vanquish it.
Our hearts/soul can feel so much pain that becomes all we know. We wait for help to find hope again and we get passed by while it seems everyone around us is finding what we need or able to walk away from something that has us trapped, crushing us and killing off the last thread of hope we had. But then something happens. Something unexpected comes into our lives reminding us we do matter even if it is just something as quiet as a glimmer within our soul filling us with a second of warmth.
It is so easy to be thankful when we have all we need, like Job did. It would have been very difficult for him to understand pain, suffering and questioning everything had he never been subjected to it himself. Most of us have a hard time understanding pain if we never experienced it. How can you understand someone falling apart if all you've ever known is a happy life? How can you understand the pain of someone losing everything they had if you have always had everything you needed? How can you understand if you have never been pulled from God sucked into the abyss of doubts.
This is what pain looks like when someone is waiting for prayers to be answered. This is what it seems like as they suffer waiting and wondering when a reason to believe in hope will ever come into their lives again. When they did the right thing for the right reason and ended up suffering for it they wonder what it was all for. Did they matter at all? Did their suffering mean anything to anyone? Did God even notice they did what they were supposed to do? When they are surrounded by people looking for reasons for the suffering instead of searching for what they can do to really help, they add to the suffering instead of being the answer to the prayer.
Hungry people need food, not blame by the well fed. Homeless people need shelter, not people heading off to the other side of the street so they don't get bothered by the wretched beggar. People grieving need comfort, not someone telling them they shouldn't feel the way they do. Survivors of trauma need to be reassured they are loved and worthy of love, not subjected to someone telling them to "get of it" without even trying to help them heal.
God does not snap His fingers to answer our prayers. He calls to others to do the work. He tries to send us to answer the prayers because we understand what it is like to lack hope at times just as much as we remember what it was like when we came out of the darkest despair in our own lives. Do we hear Him? Are we willing to go where He's sending us? Are we willing to re-experience the pain in order to help someone experience the joy again?
If we do not, if we are not willing to help someone, then a soul is being subjected to breaking apart the connection to God. If we refuse to help with the help that is needed, even if it is beyond our own comfort level, then we have just refused God. If we close the calling to our soul because we have something more important to do, then we close off hope to someone.
If someone is in pain, be there to listen and spend time with them without trying to fix them quickly so that you can get back to your own life.
If someone is ill and suffering, show up and visit without looking at your watch to see if you spent enough time there.
If someone has lost someone they love, don't tell them God needed them more than they did.
If someone is hungry, feed them. If they hunger to know God has not forgotten them, don't offer only to pray for them instead of trying to really fill the need they have.
We will all question our lives when our hearts ache and no one tries to strengthen our souls so they do not break. Can you bind up the wounds of others? Can you remember your own pain in your own life long enough to reach out to someone else and help them get to where you are? Is God asking you to do some of the work for Him right now?
If you have come out of the abyss of trauma induced afterlife, then speak out and help someone else. If you are falling into the abyss, reach out for help so that you can heal and then promise to turn around and help someone else out. You may be a Soldier or a Marine, or cop or a firefighter, but you are still just human like the rest of us and like the rest of us, events in your life can have you questioning your life but you feel it deeper because you cared more to begin with.
