Perhaps in the strangest of ways, those wordless cries of mourning that we send to heaven are actually heard, discerned, and answered.
There was no fanfare trumpet from heaven, no host of angels singing hallelujahs. In fact, it happened so slowly I was not even aware it had happened until last night. But yes, I believe that what my soul truly needed, what I could not voice out loud, was given to me.
When I woke yesterday morning, my first thought, my first feeling, was loss. The empty spot in my soul was still lingering – the one where my relationship and love with Sam once dwelled. That raw aching had not yet been taken from me. It was not as searing as the days previous, but it was still there.
Then, something happened. I am not sure when; I am not sure how. But the aching gnawing feeling inside me began to disappear. I was left with some odd sort of clarity, some sort of understanding of what my love for Sam really was. Do not confuse this with sadness or regret. I still carry both of those. But this was something deeper; something quiet; something given silently. A gift; an answered prayer.
When I was praying, lying on the floor in a puddle of my own self-absorption, I knew, faintly, like a whisper, that what I was asking was for the hurt to be gone. No more hurting; no more emotional wrenching in my heart; no more despair.
All my life, however, I’d felt that as long as I was aching and hurting over a thing, then that must mean that thing, whatever it was, must be valuable. If I let my heart be twisted apart and allowed my soul to be dragged across sandpaper every moment of every day, if I suffered for my loss, surely that meant the loss was incredibly significant. My suffering, my angst, gave the loss a value, a purpose, an existence.
I was afraid to let go of my suffering. I was afraid that if I was not hurting, that meant my relationship with Sam was insignificant and the loss merely a superficial happening.
But last night, it slowly became a realization: I was not in a heart-wrenching, empty, aching, suffering state of mind. I began to realize that none of this suffering truly defined my love for Sam or our relationship at all. When all of those painful feelings were removed, when the ache of recognizing the emptiness where love used to be has disappeared, we are left with something truer, something significant.
When gold is raw, its value is based on its raw weight. It is not a pretty thing, a nugget of raw gold. But it can be recognized as something valuable. That nugget is taken, melted and smelted, so its precious core can be separated from useless, insignificant materials. In the end, one has a beautiful, shining precious gift, the value of which has increased by merely having been sieved.
In days gone by, when wheat was harvested, the golden stalks were beaten and thrashed against jagged rocks until the chafe separated from the grain, and flew away. What was left was of value; good clean usable grain. Its value was ten-fold because of its having been thrashed and beaten.
Inside me, my soul and heart had been thrashed, beaten, melted, and smelted. My pain had been centrifuged. The process was unavoidable; and, the process was necessary. Without it, I would not be able to recognize the true value of my love for Sam. Without it, I would still be weighing the relationship’s worth with my suffering and pain, and viewing everything through a pane of loss. Without it, I would still be calling wordless prayers to God, spending my hours mourning, rather than living.
Today is the fourth day since the breakup. I have cried; I have prayed; I have stumbled. And somehow, through all of that, I have been relieved. Almost healed. And what remains is a truer version of my love for Sam than I ever believed existed before.
There is still an empty space in my heart and in my life that Sam’s love used to fill. Until today, all I could see was what was missing, what was lost.
But what I hold in my heart right now this moment is what remains when the pain, hurt, tears, disappointment and rejection are removed: the true remembrance that we once loved, and that love was good, valuable, significant. And worth even more than a raw nugget of gold.
