The spiritual life does not save us from heartache or suffering. It opens us up to experience life more fully. By choosing to live with an open heart, we are choosing both joy and sadness, pleasure and pain, connection and heartbreak. We get it all. 

Whether we know it or not, when we step onto the spiritual path, we are making a decision to feel everything, to experience everything. As a spiritual director once told me, “Unfortunately, we do not get to selectively numb. We can feel everything or nothing.” Openness is a package deal.

But it’s hard. Living with an open heart is hard. Love is hard. People we care about pass away, some betray or abandon us, and others disappoint us and let us down. And, in spite of this, we have to keep going. 

People who were on the path before us, who once led, guided, and accompanied us, they sometimes fall off or walk away, or they may simply stop seeking. They stop growing. Likewise, people we entered onto this journey along side, or met along the way, may not stay with us for the long haul. We are lucky if they do, but chances are they won’t. 

Quite often what feels like a parallel path of lifelong companionship turns out to be only a brief meeting at a crossroads. Even the deepest connections, connections that feel eternal, may not last but a moment before we are pulled by God or self in different directions. And parting hurts. 

If we are dedicated to this path, however, if we have chosen to love and seek God above all else, we must keep going. For those of us who long so deeply for divine connection with the infinite and eternal source of all things that nothing else will suffice, we must continue on the path even, or perhaps especially, when it gets lonely. We must walk in faith with our broken hearts toward the one who heals all wounds. 

But it’s not going to be easy. Easy was never the promise anyway. It’s going to be real. It’s going to be true. It’s going to be meaningful. It’s going to be rewarding. It’s going to be fulfilling. But it’s not going to be easy. 

This hardened world will break our fragile hearts, but as the late Leonard Cohen said, “That’s how the light gets in.” 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox.