“Don’t let it Break Your Heart.”

 E,

Pain is temporary, does not console as much as it sounds like it should.
When you are in pain, no consolation will do. It is immediate. It is the thing
in front of you. There seems to be, in that moment, nothing else but that
pressure on you. You even fail to imagine a time that was free of pain, a time
when this was not the thing you were facing and any memory of happiness becomes
an echo. This happens to everyone but that sentence does not help either when it seems to be only happening to you.

The thing that I would tell you is: don’t let it break your heart. This seems
like an easy pass at a solution but it is at the very core of enduring your bad
moment. You must not make it destiny. It is not the end you think it is. This framing
will help you get out from under it. You must not rush out of it or pretend
everything is alright. Healing is on its own time. Yet, you must be able to see
that there is an end to pain. You must have hope that things will come out into
the light again. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Hope cannot be empty, and
it cannot be rushed and cannot be a figment of a positive imagination. It has
to be real.

Our hope is from the universes above us and the depths within us. We know
there is something beyond our present reality that calls to us and our hearts
bear witness to this overwhelming truth: we are created to be more than all
our present conditions and troubles. This calling is an individual one, but it affects
how we see the world. It affects how we process our pain and the pain of others.
There is a counterpoint, a moral centre at the core of our universe, that
allows us to know the difference between kindness and wickedness. That experience
of God is crystalized in words and acts passed down into our faith. Our faith
does not promise that there is no pain but tells us there is an end to pain. It
tells us these things are temporary. That there is another reality impending,
without war or hunger or poverty or evil in it. It tells us the darkness cannot
possibly win. It will huff and puff but it is a fading thing, unlike all the
things that we know are good; lies bow to honesty in the end, falsehood to
truth, hate to love and pain to the fullness of our waking selves. In the meantime,
in spite of how things get, and how slowly we get over the tragedies we face,
we must not let that temporal sting break these hearts carved in the shape of eternity.