“And behold, I have given unto you the law and the commandments of my Father, that ye shall believe in me, and that ye shall repent of your sins, and come unto me with a broken heart and a contrite spirit.” (LDS 3 Nephi 12:19)
What brings about a broken heart is never easy. If it were easy, it wouldn’t break your heart. It is often something that is, from the perspective of the one who receives it, life shattering. Their whole world, or the world in which they have lived and how they thought things should be, is shattered. It can seem that the “rules of the universe” or at least how things should operate in our personal sphere, are violated. It can be a “this kind of thing should never have happened” sort of event. It is truly heart breaking.
There is divine purpose behind having such an experience. It is meant to shape you into being a different, better person than you ever were or could be before. That outcome is, however, not guaranteed. How we respond, matters. Having a broken heart is intended to change us into a more mature person who can have a deeper understanding and greater compassion for others. It can soften a person to make them sweeter, with a much deeper capacity to love and with a different kind of love.
But it can also produce someone who is more angry and bitter than they were before. They can rise up in anger, crying out to curse those involved, including God and foment resentment for ever having such a painful experience.
Whether a person will become softer, more compassionate and sweet as a result of their broken heart, or whether they will become harder, more angry and bitter, depends on how they choose to respond to the experience that breaks their heart.
Remembering the experience may always be a reminder of the disappointment, pain and suffering, yet eventually, with enough time and understanding, we can actually be grateful to have had the experience. We can see that, as painful of an experience as it was, it was necessary to make us into what God wants us to be. We can be much more kind, sweet, compassionate and understanding to a level that we never could achieve otherwise. It is a beautiful thing to see that it was personally necessary and even worth it in order to become the “new you”.
While the pain and disappointment that can create a broken heart is certainly to be bound up and healed, there is also something that is intended to be permanent. It’s not to remember the pain but to mark becoming a new person and remembering that you were not always that way.
Before apples become sweet in the fall, they often have to endure something unpleasant and very different from what they’re used to, like the cold, in order for them to begin to turn from a tart or bitter flavor to something that is sweet and delicious. It may be so with us, that we actually need a broken heart experience to prompt us into becoming something beautifully sweet.
In taking the sacrament, the bread, which begins as a whole, is broken into pieces. That is what it can feel like to be broken. Jesus was broken that he might win us with his love. He allowed himself to go through the heart breaking experiences that he did to show that he understands us and we might believe Him when He says that He loves us. If our hearts are broken as Jesus’ was, perhaps it might similarly serve a divine purpose.