Healing a Broken Heart: A Second Chance

Healing a Broken Heart: A Second Chance

A healer has a broken heart.
And many days have passed.

With sleepless nights spent searching
For the questions never asked……


The doctor said he wanted to do a cardiac catheterization. He said he’s 99% sure there is one or more blockages. He spoke of straight metal stents and medicated stents and open heart surgery. He gave me prescriptions for nitroglycerin and warned me to take it easy until the procedure:
“This is your heart
We’re talking about,” he said calmly and deliberately.
It couldn’t be physical, I argued in my head. My numbers are so good.
Good cholesterol. Good triglycerides. Great ratio of good to “bad” cholesterol.
What, then?

In that very instant an inner voice said:
You have a broken heart.
Oh that’s crazy, I thought.
How could the squeezing pain in my chest be a broken heart?
People don’t actually have “broken” hearts.
That’s just a romantic notion invented
by some lovesick poet long ago in a land far away.
A fairytale.
An enigma, at best.

The thought persisted:
You have a broken heart.

I paused to listen. There was more to this.
I had known about the mind –body connection
With regard to disease.
I was also aware of the phenomenon that all that is evident in the physical realm originates in the spiritual realm.
Did I have dis-ease? Perhaps.
Was I aware of it? No, not consciously, at first.
Did it exist? Well, yes, it did. It became apparent in my physical body.


So I set out to learn what brought me to this place.

I had to ask what I’d done or
Not done
That left me in this condition.
Through the course of introspection and reflection I came upon the question of my own mortality. That’s not so surprising considering the nature of the situation. My heart is involved.

I asked myself a few questions, but not very far into the self-exam did THE question present itself.

If there was one thing in the whole wide world that you could have, do or be before you die, what would it be?

Aha! I see where this is going.
THIS is headed in the direction of regret or remorse.

This was not an indication to me that I felt I might die, but something much more profound.

This was a revelation about what I truly wanted, something that I absolutely, without a doubt had to do before I leave this world, something I had, in fact, left undone.

And in not so graceful fashion it became clear to me:

I had stuffed my feelings and hopes and dreams into some remote corner of my heart. I had stuffed them there for safe-keeping, for some distant day when the time was right, for some someone to give me permission to be who I am, live the life I was meant to live, and to love with all my heart. My heart. My heart is swelling with those improbable hopes and inflamed with the slow-burning embers of my once white-hot dreams. My heart is now filled to capacity and the flow of life is being blocked, literally.

As long as live, there is time to fix it, I thought.
There’s time! There’s still time!
There’s still time to take action.
It’s not too late…yet.

So the cardiologist will do the procedure.
Will he find a blockage? Can he see a broken heart?
Will it be mended before he gets there?

It started as an intangible, ethereal experience: unresolved feelings, unrealized dreams, stifled hopes,
That has, over the years, translated into physical pain and damage….but damage that can be mended, if given the chance.

I have been reminded of these words time and again over the last several years and never have they made more sense to me than right now:
“Guard your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life…” Proverbs 4:23
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12

I know now what I must do.

My life is depending on it.