We broke up standing in a warm rain. It felt like the spring sky opened in an instant that afternoon, pounding the city with all of winter’s pent-up precipitation. Really, though, the clouds had been heavy for months. It had been a long time coming.
I almost couldn’t remember the last time the sky was blue, I realized as I stood there in my sopping Reeboks. Was it when he cleared out a drawer for me at his place? At one of the shabbat dinners or family stays we’d hosted together? Maybe our trips to his grandmother’s house in Detroit, with his parents to Mexico? Or maybe it was our first trip to D.C. when we ran between the monuments in a thunderstorm, drenched to the bone, clothing clinging to our bodies like we clung to each other?
All I know is I stopped weather-watching when he took my face in his hands in front of the L-Train Bedford stop and looked at me like he saw me. Grace, I promise, he said, I’m not going to break your heart.
I ignored my friend's warnings and took him at his word. At first, our relationship was expansive. I was eager to learn about him — his Jewish heritage, his hopes and desires for his life, the things that made him anxious, the songs that made him cry. How he stocked the fridge and the way his mom taught him to fold clothes.
I did the things I promised myself I’d never do again until I was engaged or married. I compromised. I spent more time at his waterfront apartment than at mine on the Upper West Side, trading brownstone for stainless steel. It’s ok, I thought, because this is it.
I was eager to show him who I was, too — how I'd changed since we met in college. My friends, my family, my church life. What my hope was rooted in. How I could love him.
As I opened my heart, and as he learned more about his own, he slowly retracted his affection. First, for superficial things, like my politics. Then for my career. And then for my friends and family. Instead of walking away, I tried desperately to prove my worth. I shrank my faith in God and nurtured faith in him instead.
Just make more room, I thought at night as I fought my way to sleep without prayer.
We could only hold on for so long that way. I knew the one who’d seen my heart had rejected it. Maybe, I thought as I walked into the storm and left him standing under the coffee shop awning, it had always been raining.
*
A few months after the storm had passed, I attended a wedding in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Though I had never dated a Christian myself, I’d walked with many Christian friends in the dating world. They conducted themselves differently, maintaining a distance from their significant others that seemed stifling to me. They sincerely repented for “going too far” and talked about sleeping over on their partners’ couches in whispered tones. Their timelines confounded me. They moved glacially until they were married.
Heartbreak happened, of course – I’d seen plenty – and it was real, painful. But it was lighter somehow. Tinged with hope. Such was the case with this particular pair, one of the first Christian couples I’d observed intimately from meetcute to marriage. Their story was one of conflict, forgiveness, reconciliation and redemption.
Each wedding detail was thoughtful. They commissioned art of the church where they met by a local artist and mutual friend. The bride chose the bridesmaids’ dresses based on each woman’s personality and style. They’d even driven a U-Haul from New York City to Pennsylvania to pick up reclaimed stained-glass church windows for the altar.
What struck me most that day was the light. The modest chapel interior exploded with living refractions from the kintsugi-like pieces, each collective pane more beautiful and valuable than when the glass within it had first been broken.
The liturgy told the story of their relationship. They cried as they said their vows. Not a single sentence was devoid of thankfulness to God for the gift of one another. To love her groom well, she said, she would first chase after Jesus. I saw love in a new way within Biblical boundaries.
We sang hymns. ‘Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus, just to take Him at His word. Just to rest upon the promise. Just to know, “thus saith the Lord.”’
I witnessed their joy and turned the hymns over in my head, talking to the God who had chased down my heart like a dog in the night. Who knew in His Spirit what I thought in my heart (Mark 2:8). He who’d seen the seat of my most basic orientation, my disordered loves, my deepest commitments – what I trusted the most (Proverbs 3:5; 23:26), what captured me most (Matthew 6:21), what I loved most and hoped in.
Instead of pulling away, He held out His hands. Here, He said, let me hold that for you. I promise not to break it.
This is not the way of the world. In our hearts, philosophers see a “problem” of emotion to be solved. Secular culture sees an identity. This makes us fickle and anxious, chasing one desire after another. We love people and then we leave them. We turn from money to morality and back again. We turn to God in need and from Him in our busyness. Our hearts are divided. Broken.
Can we bridge the gap between the desires of our hearts and the circumstances of our lives? Can we change what we worship? Can we chase God with unbroken hearts, and trust that He is the giver of all good and lasting things? Can we trust in Him?
Jesus Himself knows heartbreak beyond rejection, beyond betrayal, beyond death. “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me,” He implored in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:39). But, for the first time, the skies were silent. Hell opened before Him. Divine wrath was dealt upon the world’s only innocent man.
All of this heartbreak for the sake of you and I. So that, in the end, the sad things might become untrue. So that, as rain ceases and the summer light streams through, the window might become more beautiful for having been shattered.
*
‘Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus,
Just to take Him at His word.
Just to rest upon the promise.
Just to know, “thus saith the Lord.”
Grace Bydalek is a Nebraska native living on the Upper West Side. She is the Director of the Dissident Project, a theatre critic for the New York Sun, and an independent journalist focused on culture, politics and faith.
Published in the Conservateur on August 4th, 2023
Image: The Conservateur