5 Ways to Fully Heal From Heartbreak

All wounds heal in due time...

One of my favorite Scriptures in the Bible is Psalm 147:3. The New King James Version of it says “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” Aside from the fact that I find it to be a “warm fuzzy assurance” from God, it also serves as a reminder to me that he is well aware of the fact that at one point or another, almost all of us are going to experience heartbreak. And that while it really is the worst kind of pain to feel, healing (and learning and evolving) can come from it.

Yes, heartbreak ultimately is a wound that can make you better. If you allow it to.

That said, I wish I could say that I am not a “repeat offendee”---more so than an offender---when it comes to heartbreak but honestly, it’s something that I am very familiar with. Off the top of my head, my first love experience ended in heartbreak. I had a fiancé who died 20 years ago this year in a freak car accident and that was heartbreaking. And then I went through what I call “big girl love” and it ended in heartbreak.

You might be thinking to yourself “I sense a pattern here” and to a certain extent, you may be right. Perhaps there are some things all three men had in common; even if it was simply leaving me before I was ready for them to.

Accept that love comes with risk

But you know what? I’m not uncomfortable sharing my experiences. Why? It’s because even God experiences heartbreak. The very definition of the word is “intense and overwhelming grief, especially through disappointment in love”. We’re flawed. We’re prideful. We’re not always the most trusting of him and the path that he has for us. And because of that, sometimes we would rather do anything but trust God and his will for our lives. For him, at times, that must bring about intense and overwhelming grief…it must cause feelings of disappointment…it must be, yes, heartbreaking.

And yet one of the awe-inspiring things about the Lord is that he keeps on loving and forgiving and believing anyway. And so, being that I personally believe that I am made in the image of my Creator, I strive to do the same. I John 4:8 tells us that God is love. As his child, I am to be a love representative for him, meaning, I have to strive to “be love” too. No matter what.

My personal journey has revealed to me that when you accept that love comes with risk and one of those risks is heartbreak, it makes you recover from heartbreak with a clearer head, a more mature approach and a willing spirit---to love again. And so, since heartbreak is something that I’m pretty familiar with, I just wanted to take out a moment to share with you some things I’ve learned when it comes to how to truly and fully heal from it.

"Choose to heal."

The relationship didn’t “just happen”. It didn’t “just end” either. And you know what? Healing from it won’t “just transpire”. If you don’t read anything else in this article, please finish this first point. Healing is a choice. You have to choose to want to grow and get better. James 1:4(NKJV) says this “But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” That speaks to taking some time out to deal and heal. Unfortunately, one of the biggest mistakes that people make, in response to heartbreak, is jumping into some other “situation” in order to make them feel better about what they are currently going through. What they really need to do is step back, think about what will make them whole as an individual, and then embrace the time that it will take for wholeness to manifest itself. Initially, it might seem like another relationship will soothe your broken heart, but I’ve learned the hard way that the best way to get that kind of pain is through self-love. Anything else is…a mirage.

"Don't deny your grief."

It’s kind of another message for another time but a few years ago, I spoke at an abortion recovery class (yes, because that’s a part of my testimony). An older women in the back got pretty frustrated with me, telling me that I was being very nonchalant about my journey. She’s entitled to her opinion but that actually wasn’t the issue. It’s just that as a writer and public speaker, I tend to talk about it a lot and that has helped me to work through my feelings and find some peace and resolve. For a while, I couldn’t understand why she was so upset with a complete stranger. Then she shared that she had an abortion many years ago and never really talked about it. Therefore, she never really dealt with it. The Message Version of Ecclesiastes 7:18 tells us that a man who fears God deals with all of reality and not just a part of it. You know what? One way or another, when something happens to alter the trajectory of your life, if you don’t come to terms with the reality of it, it’s going to come back to haunt you. Literally. This is especially the case when it comes to heartbreak. Whether you ended the relationship, the other person did or you’re simply disappointed because you wanted a kind of relationship that never manifested, get angry, play sad love songs, write them a letter (pray and think before sending it, though)---do whatever you need to do to get the grief out. If you don’t, the sadness can turn into bitterness and that can cause you to become jaded and ultimately change your perception about yourself and about love. No heartbreak should be given that much power.

"Ponder the relationship."

Another awesome verse in the Bible is Proverbs 4:26(NKJV): “Ponder the path of your feet, and let all your ways be established.” Ponder is such an awesome word. It means “to weigh carefully in the mind; consider thoughtfully”. It basically speaks to thinking about what was before moving on to what is. No matter how much the relationship may not have gone the way that you wanted it to, if you choose to look at it as a life-learning experience, it was not a waste of your time. However, in order to learn what you need to know, you’re going to have to be willing to not only focus on what “they” did wrong, but also what you could have done differently. For instance, one thing that my last heartbreak taught me is that reciprocity is paramount to any relationship. That wasn’t a huge priority to me before and so I was expressing my love in a way and at a level that the other person simply wasn’t prepared to offer in return. In the future, I will pace myself better. Yes, one of the most painful things ever is being in a relationship where you feel like you are pulling---if not flat-out dragging---someone behind you. They feel pressured and you feel weighed down. It’s the worst kind of exhausting. But if you don’t take ownership for things like that, you’re bound to repeat the same mistakes---until you finally learn to stop doing the same thing while expecting a different result (a classic definition of insanity, by the way).

"Forgive them. And yourself."

No matter what faith you profess, I’m pretty sure that forgiveness is a foundational tenant of it. In the Bible, Matthew 6:14-15 tells us that forgiveness from God cannot happen for us without us forgiving those around us first. Honestly, that should be enough of a motivator to do it. However, I’ll take it a step further. I believe it’s the author Gary Zukav who defines forgiveness as “Accepting the fact that the past cannot change.” For me, that’s an awesome starting point for forgiveness. Sometimes, it’s hard to forgive someone who caused us heartbreak because either we feel like they don’t deserve it or we feel it will make us even more vulnerable to them. To me, though, it’s simply a way of saying “I choose not to let what happened between us infect my ability to move on and eventually love again. I choose to accept the past for what it was and look ahead to what is.” In the movie Why Did I Get Married? Jill Scott’s character said to her ex-husband (paraphrased) “I’ve forgiven you. My new husband is a good man, he doesn’t deserve me taking out our relationship on him.” That’s another awesome way to look at forgiveness. Whatever offenses transpired, on both sides, release them. It doesn’t make you weak. It actually makes you stronger. It puts you in the position to love again. This time with a wiser view of love. Oh, and don’t expect forgiveness to happen overnight. It’s a process. I’m just saying “Embrace the process.”

"Guard your heart."

Proverbs 4:23, the Amplified Version, says this: “Keep and guard your heart with all vigilance and above all that you guard, for out of it flow the springs of life.” Some people read that and decide to put a steel trap around their heart. I read that as simple “value your heart” heads up. If you look up definitions for the word “heart”, some of them include “the center of your personality” and “the center of your emotions”. Everything that makes you who you are is precious. This means that not just any and everyone should be exposed to or have full access of it. When you feel like you are ready to date again, that’s fine. But don’t be super quick to “put your heart out there”. The center is the core. People should earn the right, through the consistency and integrity of their words and actions, to enter into that sacred space.

And yes, your heart is indeed sacred.

Remember that when it’s time, the right time, to get into another relationship.

That alone might just spare you---more heartbreak. Moving forward.