“Broken hearts? Broken relationships? The solution is always the same. FORGIVE. Forgive as you have been forgiven. And while you’re at it FORGET.”
THINGS break. Once broken, a thing loses its value. If it is worth fixing, it can be fixed and in the hands of a whiz, can be as good as new.
In our throw-away consumer-driven, impatient society where quality has taken a back seat to quantity in the name of profit and the bottom line, we are encouraged to simply toss away the broken item in the trash heap and replace it with a new one.
For those of us who grew up and were trained by mothers, fathers, teachers and even great nuns (in my book) who taught us the meaning and value of preserving items, we tend to find the fix for the broken item.
We look at the rip in the hemline of a nice dress and figure out carefully how a stitch here and there can make it good as new. That is probably why I can never get on with the supposedly “fashionable” items of ripped jeans. It is, to me, a nod toward rottenness and ugliness. Why pay good money for something so downright ugly? Oy Vey indeed!
We look at holes in the wall and buy spackle and paint to patch it up and smooth out the flaws. We crazy glue crockery to weld things back. We solder metals so that the thingamajig, whatever it is, functions once again. We replace batteries so watches and clocks go tick-tocking again.
We repair broken items. That is our default setting when we see things that are broken. But how about when the breakdown is with affairs of the human heart?
How do you fix a broken heart? There are no easy answers.
In the physical realm, if something is broken, you can fix it. And if you can’t, you relegate it to the trash heap. But not so with the human heart …
Though broken to a thousand pieces, the heart can live through the dark days until time brings its healing effects. The pain becomes dull and as life goes on, the sunlight breaks through the darkness and the heart is made whole.
Resiliency of the human heart is based on the deep and enduring understanding in the wisdom of the words: “This too, shall pass.”
But when the pains and the hurt are forged into the deep recesses of the memory and the wounds are encouraged to fester, the brokenness can be as deep as the Grand Canyon. These are the very sad cases, when the heart never heals. It is true what they say about dying of a broken heart.
There is that thing called pride and in extreme cases, hubris, the kind that damned the fallen angels. This is the one that makes it hard to fix brokenness. We become so big for our britches that forgiveness is beyond us. We equate forgiveness with weakness and our supreme pride won’t let us do it.
Broken hearts? Broken relationships? The solution is always the same. FORGIVE. Forgive as you have been forgiven. And while you’re at it, FORGET. You do yourself no favors by letting the pains and hurts fester.
Not that it’s easy to forgive and forget. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy.
But that’s the whole story of our redemption. God forgives and forgets our iniquities. Who are we not to try and do likewise during our short time here on earth?
The full benefits of forgiveness accrue first to the aggrieved party, the one who forgives and forgets. Why? Because then the heart is allowed to mend and heal with time, it becomes whole once again.
There is a play on words about time and healing that one wit wrote. It is said that. “Time heals all wounds.” And if you believe in the laws of karma, “Time wounds all heels.” Let that sink in for a moment.
God makes the prayerful heart resilient. In time, the human heart can love again as though it was never broken.
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Nota Bene: Monette Adeva Maglaya is SVP of Asian Journal Publications, Inc. To send comments, e-mail [email protected]
