When a Broken Heart Meets Another Broken Heart
There was a moment when I was able to see how the two broken hearts could help each other. The patient came to the clinic for a regular workup regarding her lung nodule. Thankfully, it had not grown and she was told that another monitoring would be enough. However, her face did not look happy even by this relatively good news which made me wonder what was bothering her. She started to talk with a sad voice that, unfortunately, her husband had passed away from lung cancer a few months ago. Soon afterwards, she started to share her real problem, the absence of her husband in her life. Listening to her description of her husband, I could easily imagine him as brave and calm enough to take care for his wife and children even until his death and could tell how much he meant a lot to her from how he had taken care of them during his entire life. I could understand that her husband’s death has removed an important part of her life and heart, leaving them empty.
"What made her share the feeling that she couldn’t easily confess? Maybe it was the sincerity of the heart that had shared the same experience as her? Would it be because she felt the genuine heart of her doctor, deeply understanding her condition and emotion?"
Surprisingly, her doctor, himself, had just returned from the funeral of his father-in-law. He knew how it would feel to lose one who has had the largest impact on someone’s life by watching and caring for his wife, to whom her father means a lot. I guess this similar heart-breaking experience made him the best person who could understand and empathize with her. His understanding heart was expressed by listening to her stories sincerely and sharing the memories of her husband who was once his patient at the same time. The sudden absence of her husband probably gave her larger sense of bewilderment than the presence of her lung nodules. What made her share the feeling that she couldn’t easily confess? Maybe it was the sincerity of the heart that had shared the same experience as her? Would it be because she felt the genuine heart of her doctor, deeply understanding her condition and emotion? Her eyes got wet and ended up finding a faint but comforting smile on her face soon after her confession.
I got emotional and was captured in my mind as two broken hearts met and healed each other. At times, I wonder what God’s purpose behind our sufferings would be but today, I realized one of His purpose as I recognized that our brokenness is sometimes more than anything to encourage and help another brokenness, making a synergy of healing. And it also helped me to rethink my own brokenness in hopes that one day it could be used to help others' brokenness.
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