This morning, I picked up the little book of Puritan Prayers, Valley of Vision. I have loved the prayers in this book! However, today I stopped after reading these words: “Give me perpetual broken-heartedness. Keep me always clinging to Thy cross.”
Certainly you understand why I quit reading. Perpetual broken-heartedness? Really? Forgive my lack of spirituality, but I don’t really want to sign up for this. I’ll make some justification in my defense.
This past fall, I went to see my doctor (hurray for insurance!), who turned around and sent me to the E.R. I had been experiencing a little pressure in my chest and after a preliminary EKG, my doc thought I might be on the verge of a heart attack. The good news is that following 36-hours in the hospital (by the way, the secret to quick attention in an ER is to complain of chest pains) they released me with a normally functioning, and beating, heart. However, the uncomfortable tightness remained, so I had to see a cardiologist for more testing. Again – bottom line is that while the inner workings of my heart looked great (other than my potassium levels being a bit low, which can mimic a heart attack), physically I was fine. (There is a “but” to follow…) BUT, after exploring life-events of my past three years (several significant events, by the way), my cardiologist explained that Mayo has recently identified what they term BHS: broken-heart syndrome. You can actually Google this term, if you don’t believe me. BHS is real. It is uncomfortable. It causes me to be short of breath. I don’t like who I am and how I react when I don’t feel well. Daily, I’m very aware life isn’t “normal” where my health is concerned; but, it will eventually go away on its own. Over the last four months, I have requested from the Lord (pretty regularly) to take it away.
So, when I read the words of the above prayer, there is a very personal slant on them. I don’t want this perpetual syndrome. My focus landed on that first sentence, and I forced my mind to look at the part “B”: Keep me always clinging to Thy cross. Those words remind me of David’s words: It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your instructions (Ps 119:71)… There is no question in my mind, the “good” of my affliction is exactly that I have not only clung to the cross of Christ – the symbol of his great grace and mercy – but I have searched and found his words to be the source of my daily strength and hope. So, in spite of my prayers for deliverance, I see a higher good coming out of the broken-heart: cross-clinging-dependence. In my journey toward gratitude, this is reason enough for the giving of thanks – yes, even for the very thing that is most uncomfortable.
If so, then to the cross I choose to cling – for there is my true source of full life, even in the face of my weakness. There at the cross, in the cross, for the cross, and under the cross is some purpose complete, not for my sake, but His.
To keep me from becoming conceited…there was given me a thorn in the flesh…three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. This is why, for Chris’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties…
2 Cor. 12:7-10