Growing up in church I’ve witnessed a fair share of broken hearts and experienced it first-hand as well. People are shocked when they hear of this. Isn’t the church supposed to be a place of refuge?

The quest for love is fraught with difficulties and risks, in church or not.

Love and marriage are a blessing from God – which is why Satan is so eager to come in to destroy relationships, hatefully and deviously.

“I think you’re not the one for me”

I was 20 when this guy in church asked me to get into a relationship with him. We were close friends prior to that, and I thought we were well matched. We had common interests and goals, and seemed passionate about the same things for God.

We sought the counsel of our spiritual leaders, and everything seemed about right. Little did I know that I was about to step onto a steep path that would leave me dealing with hurt and fear for years.

It was an emotionally abusive period. I was constantly getting put down (“I do it because I want the best for you”, he claimed) till I felt that I was never going to be good enough. He compared me to other girls and was dissatisfied with me — how I looked, how I dressed, how I didn’t meet his needs, and how I wasn’t living up to his expectations.

I was sinking into depression, but I was scared to raise it up to anyone or to end the relationship.

Despite us going into the relationship with marriage in mind as our eventual end-goal, the whole thing was short-lived. Exactly six months after it began, it ended with a simple WhatsApp message from him.

“I think you’re not the one for me,” he wrote.

Love and marriage are a blessing from God – which is why Satan is so eager to come in to destroy relationships, hatefully and deviously.

Even at the end, it seemed like it was my fault, as always. Falling into self-condemnation meant my emotions had become Satan’s playground.

In the aftermath, I felt like a scorned woman in church. I could hear the devil saying: Who’s gonna want you now? You’re unwanted and discarded! I was back at ground zero in my quest for love. This time round, ground zero felt lonelier than ever and even further away from the altar, because of all that was given and lost.

And while six months might not sound very long, the damage it caused lasted way longer than that.

Already flung into the deepest valley I’d ever been in, I later found out from friends and leaders alike that this guy struggled with commitment.

He had a tendency to jump from girl to girl, I was told, but I had no clue about this at all. He was known for burning his way through every girl in the community and leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.

I wondered why no one warned me.

Sure enough, about a month after we broke up, he confessed his feelings to a girlfriend of mine.

So it wasn’t really all my fault all along, but it took me more than another six months to climb out of the pit of self-blame.

Bad boys (and girls) exist, even in church

In my lonely road of recovery, I realised that I wasn’t the only one facing the same problem. I saw friends around me entering relationships with so much hope for the future, yet coming out hurt and in shock.

One friend told me that her life had been ruined by a guy who constantly preached to her about fidelity but had no idea how to practise it himself. Another friend found out that his girlfriend slept with someone else while she was overseas on a school exchange programme.

I was shocked. I was angry. I wanted justice served. I asked God: “Why is there heartbreak in church? Why are there bad guys in church?”

His answer was simple, but it took me months to grasp.

Hearts will break. Your heart will be broken over and over again. Yet each time our heart gets broken, it’s a call from God for us to grab hold of Him, lean on Him, seek His grace and power.

We are all imperfect and flawed. We are creatures who are prone to wander from a perfectly loving God – so how much more so from imperfect partners?

And church is a place where sinners gather, so bad guys and girls of course will exist.

Or as Morton Kelsey put it: “The church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners”.

One of the primary purposes of the church is to give a hand to the sick, not pat the healthy on the back. We’re all in this together, but it’s a journey where there will be mistakes and misunderstandings.

There is fellowship in pain

There is a unique shame and brokenness associated with heartbreak, lost love and breakups. Love and relationships are usually more celebrated in the church than anywhere else — and rightly so.

Unfortunately, these same traits often make breakups a taboo topic, awkward and uncomfortable — at best embarrassing, and at worst scandalous or humiliating for the parties involved.

Hearts will break. Your heart will be broken over and over again. Yet each time our heart gets broken, it’s a call from God for us to grab hold of Him, lean on Him, seek His grace and power.

The unbelievable but beautiful truth is that the broken me makes way for a better me.

I felt like I was damaged goods after the breakup. People return items they no longer want, and usually these returned goods are damaged and thereafter discarded. Another friend of mine going through the same process felt that she’d been ruined in God’s eyes and in the eyes of others. We lose the ability to trust, to hope and to love. And that is exactly what Satan wants.

The unbelievable but beautiful truth is that the broken me makes way for a better me. An insight into the failings of man helps us better fully understand the power of Jesus’ resurrection – knowing the pain and suffering He went through for us, despite our wretchedness.

It is in my pain that I get to know Jesus on a deeper and more intimate level.

Heartbreaks are not for nothing

Mary Wilder Tileston once wrote, “Whatever befalls us, however it befalls us, we must receive as the will of God. If it befalls us through man’s negligence or ill-will or anger, still it is, in even in the least circumstance, to us the will of God.”

He didn’t take a break from loving me in my breakup. Even if the whole episode was a mistake, His purposes are forever bigger than my blunders.

Our heartbreaks are not for nothing. It could have been him or me who primarily caused the death of our relationship, but it definitely wasn’t God. God didn’t cause the pain either, but through it I was reminded of His glorious purposes.

His promises to never leave nor forsake me are true every moment, through any relationship status.
I can testify that God has never abandoned me, and he never will. He didn’t take a break from loving me in my breakup. Even if the whole episode was a mistake, His purposes are forever bigger than my blunders.

No relationship will last forever, but the good work that God will do in us through them — even through the failures of those relationships and the pain they might bring — will.

Don’t put your hope in a man, or a woman. It’s so dangerous; when they fail us, as they inevitably will, our worlds so quickly collapse around us, like a house of cards. Instead put your hope in God, our guide and anchor even in times of human failure, heartbreak and hurt.