What do I do with a broken heart?

Last night my oldest son came to me in distress wanting to talk about the fact that his heart was broken because the young lady whom he has been admiring for ~1 year told him that he was too young for her.  For him to be 2 years younger is sacrilege in the topsy turvy world of the teenager.  And so he sat at the foot of my bed with his hands in his face experiencing that first heart ping called – REJECTION!

My heart went out to him because I remember my first encounter with a broken heart, only to realize (later in life) that not only would my hear be broken many times over but it would actually be ripped out, stomped on and kicked around in the mud for the sport of it (I imagine I am not alone in this experience).

How do I shield my son from my jaded experience(s) and provide him with sage advice that would not only get him through this ordeal but also help him in times to come?  So, I smiled slightly out of the right side of my mouth, as I often do, looked him squarely in the eye and told him – “Breathe, think before you act and this too shall pass”.  His eyes said REALLY dad, I am going through it right now and you tell me to BREATHE…AAAAGGGHHHHH!!!

We continued to talk and I told him that in difficult times I always remind myself to breathe and pause before I react because my reaction is often times just as important as the event I just endured.  My reaction can either make the situation better or worse.  I then told him life has a funny way of being cyclical and if he handles himself appropriately he will most likely have another opportunity with the young lady - when he is old enough to date that is.  As we talked/walked through it, he seemed to turn the mental corner, said, “thanks for talking to me dad” and went to bed smiling.

This morning I inquired how he was doing and he said he was good and the talk helped.  What I have not had a chance to tell him is, broken hearts are like boomerangs.  The moment you throw them and feel better, it seems like they come back around and smack you when you least expect it.  While this is unfortunately a part of the healing process, my advice is still the same, breathe and think before you act.  Too often we do something simply to ‘make the pain go away’, only to find that it was a quick fix and it did not accomplish the goal we thought it would.  In fact, this sort of behavior can lead to other habit-forming problems.  The moment that ‘thing’ no longer dulls the pain, you need another (more powerful) thing!  Then one can become trapped in the vicious cycle of simply rotating bad habits.

If you do what you always did, you will end up where you always were.  So as I told my son, breathe and think before you act because your next choice might break more than your heart.

Prov. 8:10 (NIV) “Choose my instruction instead of silver, knowledge rather than choice gold”

Blessings,

-d

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