Heartbreak is the worst of things. This is something you feel to your core... mentally, physically, emotionally, and even spiritually. This is an open door too that can allow deeper infection to take place in our lives, and one we must protect against.
While the hurt can't be avoided, especially if you are in the middle of it, there is a truth that can feel almost impossible to believe when you are deeply wounded or hurting: If someone you never imagined losing can suddenly be gone from your life, imagine who God could still bring into your life that you never imagined finding.
When you're hurting, you probably don't want to hear that, because right now, you don't want someone else. You wanted them.
You wanted the marriage to work. You wanted the relationship restored. You wanted the friendship to survive. You wanted that person beside you for the future you had already pictured together.
And when they're suddenly no longer there, you're not simply grieving a person, you're grieving conversations that will never happen, places you thought you'd go together, traditions you thought you'd keep, and an entire version of tomorrow that no longer exists. That's real grief.
But there is also an important biblical distinction the we must make: not everyone who leaves your life was taken away by God.
Sometimes people make choices. Sometimes relationships break. Sometimes betrayal happens. Sometimes death comes because we still live in a fallen world. We shouldn't automatically place God's fingerprints on everything that has wounded us.
But here is what we can confidently place in His hands: what has been lost does not place your future beyond God's ability to redeem it.
You may not understand why someone left. You may still wish they hadn't. You may still cry over memories you thought you had finished grieving. Healing doesn't require pretending the loss didn't matter, it means slowly learning that the loss does not get to decide the rest of your story.
Psalm 34:18 says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
God doesn't stand at a distance waiting for you to get yourself together, He comes close if you allow Him.
And while we love the idea that God might eventually bring someone wonderful into the empty place, sometimes His first gift isn't another person. Sometimes it's Himself.
Sometimes the empty space becomes sacred ground where you discover His presence differently. Where you heal. Where you learn who you are again. Where God begins rebuilding things inside you that you didn't even realize were broken.
And yes, perhaps there is someone ahead whom you haven't met yet.
Perhaps there are friendships you cannot imagine, relationships you couldn't have planned, conversations that haven't happened, and beautiful chapters you don't even know exist. But our hope is bigger than simply believing God will replace one person with another. Our hope is this: God will not waste your pain.
You don't know everything He is still writing. You don't know who you haven't met. You don't know what doors haven't opened. You don't know what God is healing inside you right now.
So grieve what you lost. Don't minimize it. Don't rush yourself through it. Don't pretend something didn't matter simply because it ended. But please, don't bury your future beside something that is no longer part of your present.
The person you lost may have been an incredibly important part of your story, but they were never the Author of it.
God still is. And He isn't yet finished writing.
~Devin
Devin Osborne
The Early Church
