For months now, I can't seem to shake this thought: Only a forsaken God could understand my forsaken heart.
I have felt the suffocating feeling of abandonment. I've been discarded. Forgotten. Invisible.
I have known the despair of a shattered heart, the pieces too small to ever put back together. I've failed even at simply picking them all up.
I have been wounded, sometimes even deliberately, by those who claim to love me. And worse, to love Him. Almost nothing hurts more.
I have walked through the valley of the shadow of death. And I've teetered very close to the edge, in that darkest of places.
But, if I allow my heart to wander there, I know... So has He.
I think about Jesus in the garden, wanting desperately to find another way. I think of His heart, shattered by the abandonment of those He loves deeply. I think about Him on the cross, broken and in agony. And I think...
He gets it.
"My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?"
In that moment, Jesus---God with skin on---felt forsaken by God.
God abandoned Himself. And while there's no way on earth I'll ever comprehend that, I can't help but turn that thought over and over in my heart.
Only a God who's experienced the wretched pain of forsakenness could reach through the darkness of my pit and pull me out.
Only a forsaken God could understand my forsaken heart.
And if by His wounds I am healed, then maybe by His forsakenness I am found.
Desired.
Treasured.
Adopted.
Loved. Forever.
It's because He was forsaken, it's because of His suffering, that the brokenness of my heart finds solace in Him.
As Alfred North Whitehead said,
"God is the fellow-sufferer who understands.”