“PLEASE GIVE ME a prescription for heartache.”
This curious and rather pathetic request was made by a man who had been informed by his doctor that the feelings of disability of which he complained were not of a physical nature. His trouble lay in an inability to rise above sorrow. He was suffering from “an ache in his personality” as a result of grief.
His doctor advised him to secure spiritual consultation and treatment. So continuing to use the terminology of medicine, he repeated his question, “Is there a spiritual prescription which will reduce my constant inner suffering? I realize that sorrow comes to everyone and I should be able to meet it the same as others. I have tried my best but find no peace.” Again he asked with a sad, slow smile, “Give me a prescription for heartache.”
There is indeed a “prescription” for heartache. One element in the prescription is physical activity. The sufferer must avoid the temptation to sit and brood. A sensible program which substitutes physical activity for such fruitless brooding reduces the strain on the area of the mind where we reflect, philosophize, and suffer mental pain. Muscular activity utilizes another part of the brain and therefore shifts the strain and gives relief.
An old country lawyer who had a sound philosophy and much wisdom told a sorrowing woman that the best medicine for a broken heart is “to take a scrubbing brush and get down on your knees and go to work. The best medicine for a man,” he declared, “is to get an ax and chop wood until physically tired.” While this is not guaranteed to be a complete cure for heartache, yet it does tend to mitigate such suffering.
Whatever the character of your heartache, one of the first steps is to resolve to escape from any defeatist situation which may have been created around yourself, even though it is difficult to do so, and return once again to the normal course of your life. Get back into the main stream of life’s activities. Take up your old associations. Form new ones. Get busy walking, riding, swimming, playing—get the blood to coursing through your system. Lose yourself in some worth-while project. Fill your days with creative activity and emphasize the physical aspect of activity. Employ healthy mind-relieving busyness, but be sure that it is of a worth-while and constructive nature. Superficial escapism through feverish activity merely deadens pain temporarily and does not heal, as, for example, parties and drinking.
An excellent and normal release from heartache is to give way to grief. There is a foolish point of view current today that one should not show grief, that it is not proper to cry or express oneself through the natural mechanism of tears and sobbing. This is a denial of the law of nature. It is natural to cry when pain or sorrow comes. It is a relief mechanism provided in the body by Almighty God and should be used.
To restrain grief, to inhibit it, to bottle it up, is to fail to use one of God’s means for eliminating the pressure of sorrow. Like every other function of the human body and nervous system, this must be controlled, but it should not be denied altogether. A good cry by either man or woman is a release from heartache. I should warn, however, that this mechanism should not be used unduly nor allowed to become a habitual process. Should that happen, it partakes of the nature of abnormal grief and could become a psychosis. Unrestraint of any kind should not be allowed.
I receive many letters from people whose loved ones have died. They tell me that it is very difficult for them to go to the same places they were in the habit of frequenting together or to be with the same people with whom they associated as a couple or as a family. Therefore they avoid the old-time places and friends.
I regard this as a serious mistake. A secret of curing heartache is to be as normal and natural as possible. This does not imply disloyalty or indifference. This policy is important in avoiding a state of abnormal grief. Normal sorrow is a natural process and its normality is evidenced by the ability of the individual to return to his usual pursuits and responsibilities and continue therein as formerly.
The deeper remedy for heartache, of course, is the curative comfort supplied by trust in God. Inevitably the basic prescription for heartache is to turn to God in an attitude of faith and empty the mind and heart to Him. Perseverance in the act of spiritual self-emptying will finally bring healing to the broken heart. This generation, which has suffered fully as much if not more heartache than people in preceding eras, needs to relearn that which the wisest men of all time have known, namely, that there is no healing of the pain suffered by humanity except through the benign ministrations of faith.
One of the greatest souls of the ages was Brother Lawrence, who said, “If in this life we would know the serene peace of Paradise, we must school ourselves in familiar, humble, and loving converse with God.” It is not advisable to attempt to carry the burden of sorrow and mental pain without Divine help, for its weight is more than the personality can bear. The simplest and most effective of all prescriptions for heartache then is to practice the presence of God. This will soothe the ache in your heart and ultimately heal the wound. Men and women who have experienced great tragedy tell us that this prescription is effective.
Another profoundly curative element in the prescription for heartache is to gain a sound and satisfying philosophy of life and death and deathlessness. For my part, when I gained the unshakable belief that there is no death, that all life is indivisible, that the here and hereafter are one, that time and eternity are inseparable, that this is one unobstructed universe, then I found the most satisfying and convincing philosophy of my entire life.
These convictions are based upon sound foundations, the Bible for one. I believe that the Bible gives us a very subtle, and as will be proved ultimately, a scientific series of insights into the great question, “What happens when a man leaves this world?” Also the Bible very wisely tells us that we know these truths by faith. Henri Bergson, the philosopher, says that the surest way into truth is by perception, by intuition, by reasoning to a certain point, then by taking a “mortal leap,” and by intuition attaining the truth. You come to some glorious moment where you simply “know.” That is the way it happened to me.
I am absolutely, wholeheartedly, and thoroughly convinced of the truth of which I write and have no doubt of it, even to an infinitesimal degree. I arrived at this positive faith gradually, yet there came one moment when I knew.
This philosophy will not ward off the sorrow which comes when a loved one dies and physical, earthly separation ensues. But it will lift and dissipate grief. It will fill your mind with a deep understanding of the meaning of this inevitable circumstance. And it will give you a deep assurance that you have not lost your loved one. Live on this faith and you will be at peace and the ache will leave your heart.
Take into your mind and heart one of the most marvelous texts in the Holy Bible—“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” (I Corinthians 2:9)
This means that you have never seen, no matter what you have seen, however wonderful it is, you have never seen anything to compare with the marvelous things that God has prepared for those who love Him and who put their trust in Him. Moreover, it says that you have never heard anything to compare with the astonishing marvels that God has laid up for those who follow His teachings and live according to His spirit. Not only have you never seen nor ever heard but you have never even dimly imagined what He is going to do for you. This sentence goes all out in promising comfort and immortality and reunion and every good thing to those who center their lives in God.
After many years of reading the Bible and being intimately connected with all the phases of the lives of hundreds of people, I wish to state unequivocally that I have found this Biblical promise to be absolutely true. It applies even to this world. People who really practice living on a Christlike basis have the most incredible things happen to them.
This passage also relates to the state of existence of those now living on the other side and our relationship, while we live, to those who have preceded us across that barrier which we call death. I use the word “barrier” somewhat apologetically. We have always thought of death as a barrier with a concept of a separatist nature.
Scientists working today in the field of parapsychology and extra-sensory perception and experimenting in precognition, telepathy, clairvoyance (all of which were formerly considered paraphernalia of the cranks, but which are now of sound, scientific usage in the laboratories), are expressing themselves as believing that the soul survives the barrier of time and space. In effect, we are on the edge of one of the greatest scientific discoveries in history which will substantiate, on a laboratory-exploratory basis, the existence of the soul and its deathlessness.
For many years I have been accumulating a series of incidents, the validity of which I accept and which bear out the conviction that we live in a dynamic universe where life, not death, is the basic principle. I have confidence in the people who have described the following experiences and am convinced that they indicate a world impinged upon or intertwined with our own through the meshes of which human spirits, on both sides of death, live in unbroken fellowship. The conditions of life on the other side, as we know them in mortality, are modified. Undoubtedly those who have crossed to the other side dwell in a higher medium than we do and their understanding is amplified beyond ours, yet all the facts point to the continued existence of our loved ones and the further fact that they are not far away, and still another fact implied, but no less real, that we shall be reunited with them. Meanwhile, we continue in fellowship with those who dwell in the spirit world.
William James, one of America’s greatest scholars, after a lifetime of study said he was satisfied that the human brain is only a medium for the soul’s existence and that the mind as now constituted will be exchanged at last for a brain that will allow the owner to reach out into untapped areas of understanding. As our spiritual being is amplified here on earth and as we grow in age and experience we become more conscious of this vaster world all around us, and when we die it is only to enter into an enlarged capacity.
Euripides, one of the greatest thinkers of antiquity, was convinced that the next life would be of infinitely greater magnitude. Socrates shared the same concept. One of the most comforting statements ever made was his remark, “No evil can befall a good man in this life or in the next.”
Natalie Kalmus, scientific expert in technicolor, tells about the death of her sister. The following account given by this scientifically trained woman appeared in the inspirational magazine Guideposts.
Natalie Kalmus quotes her dying sister as saying, “‘Natalie, promise me that you won’t let them give me any drugs. I realize that they are trying to help relieve my pain, but I want to be fully aware of every sensation. I am convinced that death will be a beautiful experience.’
“I promised. Alone, later, I wept, thinking of her courage. Then as I tossed in bed on through the night, I realized that what I thought to be a calamity my sister intended to be a triumph.
“Ten days later the final hour drew near. I had been at her bedside for hours. We had talked about many things, and always I marveled at her quiet, sincere confidence in eternal life. Not once did the physical torture overcome her spiritual strength. This was something that the doctors simply hadn’t taken into account.
“‘Dear kind God, keep my mind clear and give me peace,’ she had murmured over and over again during those last days.
“We had talked so long that I noticed she was drifting off to sleep. I left her quietly with the nurse and retired to get some rest. A few minutes later I heard my sister’s voice calling for me. Quickly I returned to her room. She was dying.
“I sat on her bed and took her hand. It was on fire. Then she seemed to rise up in bed almost to a sitting position.
“‘Natalie,’ she said, ‘there are so many of them. There’s Fred … and Ruth … what’s she doing here? Oh, I know!’
“An electric shock went through me. She had said Ruth. Ruth was her cousin who had died suddenly the week before. But Eleanor had not been told of Ruth’s sudden death.
“Chill after chill shot up and down my spine. I felt on the verge of some powerful, almost frightening knowledge. She had murmured Ruth’s name.
“Her voice was surprisingly clear. ‘It’s so confusing. So many of them!’ Suddenly her arms stretched out as happily as when she had welcomed me! ‘I’m going up,’ she said.
“Then she dropped her arms around my neck—and relaxed in my arms. The will of her spirit had turned final agony into rapture.