Heartbreak and Shipwreck

“What are your worst fears?” Tammy asked me.

My first reaction was, well, this is a no-brainer. I’ve lived most of my life with anxiety and dread. I should be able to rattle off my fears like a grocery list. And yet my hands lingered over the keyboard. I hesitated. I realized, I don’t know.

I used to fear specifics—getting cancer, dying young, leaving my children motherless. My mother died when she was 36, and for years I feared that ominous age, sure that I wouldn’t survive it. Now I’m 39, and as surreal as it is to be older than my mother, my fear of dying as she did has subsided.

I used to fear abandonment, betrayal, loneliness. I’ve had an ample helping of all three. Over the years I’ve lost family, friends, loves, and countless homes, two of which I loved dearly. I’ve had the rug pulled out from under me so many times, I find I brace myself, literally, physically, for the next fall, even as I sleep. And yet, abandonment, betrayal, and loneliness have become common enough that they’ve lost some of their power to scare me. I can live with these things. I know them all too well.

I used to fear I wouldn’t survive one more dirty trick. But now, at 39, I know I can, and do, and will survive. I’ve endured much physical and emotional pain. I’m stronger than I ever imagined.

And that’s when it hits me. It’s my own strength that scares me now.

I realize I have a capacity for suffering. It’s an ugly, brute thing—not the stuff of pretty inspirational memes—but I can take it. I survive. This is what I do. Perhaps it’s even my gift.

But what good is this knack for survival? What good am I to the world, lying here wrecked on the beach—tossed and buffeted by the waves, and yet born along to some unknown shore, alive, but just barely?

Sometimes, in those moments—when I realize the storm has passed, and I’m still here, breathing—death has seemed like the ultimate mercy. I admit that I’ve prayed for it. I’ve begged God to take my soul out of the earth and turn my body to dust. Grim, I know. Scary.

But God has not answered me with death. I prayed and found myself alive. I’ve staggered to my feet and learned to walk again.

So what now? Do I let these wounds scab over, become closed and hard? Do I cower and tremble, waiting for the next blow?

What if, instead, knowing my own strength, I let my wounds be as they are—open, soft, aching? What if knowing I can and do and will survive means I can afford to be gentler, more tender? What if it means I can risk heartbreak and shipwreck? That I can live and love with abandon?

My friend has a vintage holy card of the sacred heart of Mary. It’s a fleshy, realistic heart pierced by multiples swords, an expression of Simeon’s prophecy over the young mother of the infant Christ: And you yourself a sword will pierce. What I love about the image is that the swords remain—they have gone too deep to ever be extracted. And yet this sacred heart overflows not just with blood but with flowers.  

Here is my hope: Because I have known and survived much pain, I will no longer answer to fear. I’m not saying I won’t be afraid. But I won’t run and I won’t cower—not from my pain, and not from yours. I will call out, for both of us, to a God who answers death with life. I will imagine the swords in our hearts as signs of our strength, not defeat.