I was lamenting to a friend the other day about how frustrating it is that sometimes my heart and my head are not in sync.  I know this is true for many of us.  We can understand certain things logically or intellectually, but when it comes to our emotional response, we are out of balance.  I’m not sure at times if my heart should listen to my head, or vise versa.

Such is the case when relationships end.

Why is it that some things — some people — are so hard to let go when there is a ton of evidence to support that they do not have our best interest? That they no longer love us?  Co-workers or co-habitants, friends or family, it seems we get stuck in a place where we want only to consider the good.  We remember the happy times, the history of what they once meant to us, rather than who they have become.  Letting go seems impossible.

I’ve come to understand that, just like our heads, our hearts have a memory.  When we love someone, our hearts become fused together emotionally; we have soul ties that bind us to another in spiritual and even physical ways.  You simply cannot imagine your life detached from theirs.  Even when their actions no longer deserve it, the bond is so strong that it requires great effort to be released. 

I was thinking of when I was in elementary school and learning about magnets.  Do you remember?  You learned that magnets of opposite polarization attract each other and come together, bound tightly and secure.  Like magic, they remain this way until someone, or something, pries them apart.

Relationships, healthy ones, have similar properties.  Two people are drawn together, each with their differences, but by those differences they fuse a bond. If they are pure in their intentions, and all the right dynamics are in play, they let nothing come between them.  The bond remains strong.  When there is difficulty or hardship, it is their natural tendency to work it out, and become even stronger.

What separates us from another is always sin. These are powerful forces.  Rather than attracting, the opposite occurs. Unfaithfulness, dishonesty, disrespect… all create chaos that forces one to push against the other.  No matter how hard we try, just like putting two magnets together of the same polarization, they repel.

This is, I think, part of our problem when we try to reconcile our hearts with our heads.  Our heart memory is so strong, that it seeks to bring that person close again just to feel “normal.” No matter how fragmented or dysfunctional a relationship has become, our hearts know only how to love and are in perpetual motion to relink, to forgive, to try again.

Our heads, however, are one step ahead.  They know what our hearts have not yet understood.  They see the broken pieces, the broken trust, the toxic destructiveness, and put it all in some semblance of perspective. 

How do you tell your heart to stop remembering?  How do you weaken it’s desire to attract to someone who is no longer good for you? I don’t think that you can.  I think that is why “letting go” takes so dog gone long.  

All I do know, is that I do not have the power to do anything like this on my own.  I have learned that things like this can only be accomplished when I give them to God.  By laying them at His feet, by trusting Him to diffuse the longings of my heart, by knowing that He is going to lead me out of the pit of despair.  Then, I can carry on.  I can take that next step.  I can focus on what is in front of me, and not on tomorrow or next week or next year.

I do not know how long it takes for our hearts and heads to get in sync.  I am told that one day — just like that — you stop fighting for people who no longer exist as you once remembered them.  Your heart finally has de-polarized itself from the bond, and it becomes ready to accept what comes next.  

What I know for sure, is that we can’t speed it up.  It has to take its course.  It has to come to it’s own reckoning and let what our heads have been telling it to take hold.  

God does not want for us people who do not love us back.  He does not want us treated with disrespect.  He does not want for us to be dishonored or abused.  That’s not what love does. That’s not what our hearts were created for.

God is working constantly in our situations.  He is healing us, nudging us forward, causing us to lift our heads and see that He really does have better for us.  We have to trust Him.  We have to.

It is my prayer for you, as it is for myself, that your head and your heart will be in sync. That you will see God bringing into your life all that is healing, all that is good, all that is for your benefit.  

Whatever burdens your heart, know that God is working it out.  Be kind to yourself and be patient.  It will come.