A Valentine's Blessing for the Broken Hearted

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The approach of Valentine's Day is promising for many but difficult for those who are brokenhearted.  Perhaps you've experienced a heartbreak... a loss... a grief...  a disappointment... perhaps you know that now... perhaps you know another whose heart is broken and will share this post with them...  Here's Jan Richardson's blessing for the brokenhearted...

A Blessing for the Brokenhearted
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
– Henry David Thoreau

Let us agree
for now
that we will not say
the breaking
makes us stronger
or that it is better
to have this pain
than to have done
without this love.

Let us promise
we will not
tell ourselves
time will heal
the wound
when every day
our waking
opens it anew.

Perhaps for now
it can be enough
to simply marvel
at the mystery
of how a heart
so broken
can go on beating,
as if it were made
for precisely this—

as if it knows
the only cure for love
is more of it

as if it sees
the heart’s sole remedy
for breaking
is to love still

as if it trusts
that its own stubborn
and persistent pulse
is the rhythm
of a blessing
we cannot
begin to fathom
but will save us
nonetheless.

– Jan Richardson in The Painted Prayerbook



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