Heart Split in Half--and Made Whole

She's had her heart split in half too many times to count--yet with her good arm she pushes her wheel chair toward me with a smile in the nursing home when I go see her--my miracle friend--the one in whose broken heart God worked a miracle of grace.

Every time I spend much time with her, she relates more of her story. It doesn't seem to be anything she hides or merely confides--just relates rather matter-of-factly.  

How she has had three husbands, the first of which was her high school sweetheart, but who died of OCD. Then her second husband died in a brawl. She had gotten him to go to church with her, though he was an atheist. 

 

"He and I were homeless on the hill across from Gus Stop," my friend told me, remembering years ago as if it were yesterday. Only two days earlier I had stopped and taken a picture of this very Gus Stop, because this is the store in town that the natives frequent most. The street next to it is almost a demarkation line. From that point, it's more white man's territory, with ranchers buying gas at Dino Mart just across the street from Gus Stop, while natives buy at Gus Stop. 

My friend's third husband died of a heart attack, she said, after getting home from prison. He had tried to help a woman in a brawl, and when he hit the man, the man fell and split his head open on the concrete and died. Her husband went to prison for it.  

 

All her first three husbands were related to each other. Two were cousins of each other, and one was an uncle to them, and they were all about ten years older than she was. Now she is married to a fourth husband, and he is in prison, too, she said. 

Her twin brother died, as did her first child at age 4, as if there were not enough deaths and broken hearts in her life. 

"I've had a rough life," she admits, "but now I walk with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." Ever since the day, after her second stroke, that Jesus came to her in the hospital room and transformed her life, she has been a different person with a transformed life. 

She asked me to read more than one of her favorite Scriptures, and I did, including the one in 2 Corinthians about weakness, she said. She knew the reference, chapter 12, better than I did--the verse talking about God's grace being made perfect in weakness. 

 

I read her a story, and then we prayed together. She prayed, too, thanking God that when she was lonely that day, God sent someone to keep her company. 

 

She made my day--this lady whose heart, broken into a jillion zillion pieces, has, through the love of Jesus, been made whole again.