What becomes of the broken-hearted?

For the second time this year, I have been heartbroken. I lost my Dad in May and this blog post may only serve as a reminder that we are not just spiritual creatures, we are flesh and blood. Whatever our choices moving forward, we shouldn’t conceal the past by claiming that we protect others when we really are protecting ourselves from their ostracism and rejection.

It may go against the grain of privacy to put this in the public domain, but I feel compelled to declare that I have known and lost love. By the conservative Christian standards that I learnt, divorce and re-marriage is prohibited. I may eventually learn to live with this as my fate, or discover a less censorious way of life in the future.

Some people come into your life as a breath of fresh air. I am not ashamed to say that the breath in my life has been Fran.

I have not lived in a moralist bubble for my 19 years in England. I defy any Christian to exist in isolation with minimal family contact to that extent. Judge me and you call upon yourself the same wilderness of solitude that I experienced.

The measure of someone’s worth to you is whether they unite with all of your challenges, hopes and dreams. Where are they in your moments of darkest doubt? When you stay up all night to meet a deadline, are they fast asleep, or doing what they can by making coffee to keep you awake.

How do you spend time together? Thrilled by the same tastes, or at opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. Do friends and family look on and marvel at the strength of your commitment to each other?

Look at your pictures together. Do you see unrestrained happiness and giving, or perfunctory settling for what you can take? Do you always need, or tire of each other’s company?

To all those questions, Fran provided a resounding yes.

Wherever her life goes, I also know she brought me back to Christ. For this, she will be blessed. This may be the epitaph: She always wanted the best for me and knew He would and could provide it. Unfortunately, my single-minded pursuit of God made her faith in her claim on me a lot less sure. For that, I am sorry.

So judge, if you will, two people bereft of what could have been partnership and love of their lives.

I cannot deny the love that was mine.

As Michael McDonald sang:

It was so right,
It was so wrong almost at the same time.
The pain and ache a heart can take.
No one really knows when the memories clear.
And keep you here 'til you no longer care.
You can let go now.

It's wrong for me to cling to you.
Somehow I just needed time from what was to me.
It's not like me to hold somebody tight.
But I was tossed high on love.
I almost never came down.
Only to let in when love's no longer blind or I'm no longer blind.
I can let go now.

To Fran.