Thank You for Breaking My Heart

I am Ben Folds. I've said it before, but he and his band just confirmed it for me all over again. This week Ben Folds Five released yet another winning album. And this album, like the ones that have come before it, includes several songs which resonate with me. But one song in particular seems to echo what I've been learning at this time of my life.

Thank you for breaking my heart.

No, I wouldn't actually say my heart is broken. If you're looking for true confessions of a lovesick girl, you're going to be disappointed (sorry). But this heart has been wrung and tested several times and in several ways in the past three months. And, though I love to imagine what a pain-free life would be like, I find myself thankful, like Ben, for the pain. Maybe this will make more sense when you read some of the lyrics....

Yeah I want a different answer
So I ask you once again
But the truth in the silence this time I got it
It's over.

Thank you for breaking my heart
Now I know that it's in there
I left it wide open
And asked you to stay
But you know better.
. . . . 
And thank you for breaking my heart
Now I know that it's in there
And it hurts so badly
Tell me this will pass . . .
 
It's kind of like hope, isn't it? How does one keep hoping when hoping hurts? Do you keep loving people when you know it just increases the risk of getting hurt? Or do you continue to "love hard" when you know that it has the potential to hurt that much worse in the end?

C.S. Lewis actually said something similar in his book The Four Loves:

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

"To love at all is to be vulnerable." (Can I get an Amen?!) When you love other people you take the risk of letting them hurt you. Yes, your heart will be wrung, often tested to its max. You might end up with a broken heart, or even worse, you might hurt someone else in the process-- but ultimately, isn't that better than the alternative? Really, it's the best things that are worth the most risk. And love, I believe with everything in me, is one of those best things.

So with Ben Folds, I say: Thank you for breaking my heart. For wringing it, for testing it, for stretching it, and even cracking it in a few places. I'm not saying it felt good, but now I know that it's in there, and I know that it hasn't become unbreakable, impenetrable, and irredeemable.