When My Heart Breaks

My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.

—Psalm 51:17

I used to think that the growth we experience through pain, physical or not, was a consolation prize. I used to think it was like having a good personality. Who wants a good personality when you can have legs for days or a face that launches a thousand ships? I thought that what we really want are easy lives, and if we can’t have those, then we can at least become deep, grounded people who grow through heartbreak.

But I don’t know anyone who has an easy life forever. Everyone I know gets their heart broken sometime, by something. The question is not, will my life be easy or will my heart break? But rather, when my heart breaks, will I choose to grow?

Sometimes in the moments of the most searing pain, we think we don’t have a choice. But we do. It’s in those moments that we make the most important choice: grow or give up. It’s easy to want to give up under the weight of what we’re carrying. It seems sometimes like the only possible choice. But there’s always, always, always another choice, and transformation is waiting for us just beyond that choice.