A Breaking Self, A Transformed Heart

Posted by parkejladd on Nov 22, 2009 in Featured {Article} | 6 comments

Yeah, if it doesn’t break your heart it isn’t love
Now if it doesn’t break your heart it’s not enough
It’s when you’re breaking down with your insides coming out
It’s when you find out what your heart is made up of

– Switchfoot, Hello Hurricane, Yet

It is difficult to fully comprehend just how dedicated we are to someone until something radical occurs in relationship to them.  The radical relationship breakdown usually involves some level of inner restlessness simultaneously accompanied by movement toward a point of firm decisiveness.   The decision, many times, is between following someone or something wholeheartedly–truly committing to the journey–or, slowly backing away, severing ties in silence.  It’s in these moments of breakdown that we come to an unequivocal understanding of just how meaningful or not that one persons life or thing is to our own.  We tend to see most clearly in the breakdown, when all else fades into the background and the truly important within a defined moment stands up and makes its presence known.  In the midst of challenging transition, we either cut through the clutter, or the clutter cuts through us.

When something so significant transpires that your heart unmistakably breaks in response, then you know, despite every other surrounding distraction or desire, that your life will never again be the same.  It is during the initial moving of our hearts that sincere, lasting transition takes place, starting within the inner most portion of our minds, moving graciously outward, striking through layers of self-composed identity, transforming our entire lives into something new.  It is within this state of transformation where freedom, overwhelming peace, and genuine joy are discovered.   It is during these moments of breakdown that we begin to see our lives through a more earnest lens, honestly begging ourselves for the answers to the most demanding questions we’ve been ignoring for so long.  Within the breakdown, we are capable of better differentiating between what is genuinely valuable and that which is simply not.

We seek a beautiful breakdown.  We long for a transition in thinking away from thoughts consumed with the feverish satisfaction of our own wants and desires by way of accumulation and self-service into a life defined by a genuine, passionate pursuit of something greater than what our current, self-imposed routine has to offer.  We seek a heartfelt breakdown; a shifting and bending of our hearts toward Love.  We long to live lives founded upon and consumed by love, to run freely forward completely at peace, canvased by grace and mercy.   We seek a breakdown of commonality, no longer to be defined as lukewarm, content to blend in and slip away into the comfortable, quiet reverie that is complacent mediocrity.

To seek a beautiful, captivating breakdown is to chase after something bigger than anything we can ever be on our own.  It requires self sacrifice, an attitude of surrender, and a world-view founded upon the idea that if I have I will give and if I have not I will still give.  The relevancy of the message is that within the breakdown, within the stripping away of everything that hinders us from seeing clearly–undivided by selfish pursuit–there results the common factor of love which binds us all together.

Despite the breakdown, the personal struggle, the hardship, the internal wrestling with what genuine generosity looks like, despite it all, nothing can eliminate or outweigh the love we show and have for one another.  When all else is stripped away, and there is nothing left to lean on, nothing else to run to, love will remain.  Love conquers the deepest of all breakdowns.  It reaches in, heals, and sets us free.  When every other distraction is dispersed, love still remains.  In the end, how we respond to the core issue of love is what will matter the most.  As my friend Aaron likes to ask, “Are you using your stuff to love more people, or are you using people to get more stuff?”  A strong dedication to love is a commitment capable of sustaining us through any breakdown.  In the end, after the storms of life have passed, after everything of lesser importance has left the conversation, when we are satisfied in a state of beautiful transition, nothing else will be significant outside of authentic, vibrant love.