5 Ways to Heal After the Heartbreak of a Pandemic
by Amy DeVore
On every side, wherever I look, I seem to be encountering more and more women dealing with heartbreak, betrayal, and brokenness. It feels like a global broken heart pandemic. We’ve experienced worldwide tragedy and chaos, with the enemy using this opportunity to steal, kill, and destroy by pitting us against one another.
The aftermath is we feel as if we’ve been left for dead, we’re exhausted and we’re soul-weary. We’ve laid our dreams aside; the plans that God put on our hearts and we’ve stopped building. We’ve experienced an avalanche of grief, fear, sadness, and uncertainty. As a result, our unhealed soul wounds were left exposed and we bled out on each other. Multiply that by over seven billion people worldwide and we have a lot of hurt people hurting people and the rise of the broken heart pandemic after the pandemic.
God Isn’t Done Yet
But God never leaves his people for dead; he is the Great Redeemer. Even when he allows breaking and tearing down, his heart is always to restore and rebuild something new that is even better than before.
“Afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted, I will rebuild you with stones of turquoise, your foundations with lapis lazuli.” (Isaiah 54:11)
He’s taking us from ordinary rocks and fashioning us into the finest and most royal jewels but it’s only through the fire that we get there.
Healing Steps Forward
As we feel the exhaustion in the wake of it all, as much as we’d like to take another nap, the answer to soul-exhaustion is not more self-care. Here are five steps God has shown me as he’s inviting me to rise up from the heartbreak pandemic.
1. Focus On The Healing
Recognize that even if the memories might still sting, healing is happening.
Because God is able to redeem anything and has promised to work all things for good (Joel 2:25, Romans 8:28), we can take Him at His word and know that we are closer to stepping into the plans and purposes that He has for us.
2. Start Believing Again
Believe that God can do what he said he would do in your life, that the dreams he gave you are real and possible.
Believe that it’s not over for you, it’s just the beginning.
And believe that God can raise the dead, and restore every broken thing. (Jeremiah 32:27, Joel 2:25)
3. Forgive
Seek God for His forgiveness that fully covers you for the times where you may have gotten off course.
Forgive yourself for the people that you hurt while you were healing.
Forgive those that may have hurt you or didn’t care for your heart as you deserved.
4. Pick Up Your Shovel and Your Sword
As you begin to rebuild the broken places, the relationships, and the dreams, the enemy will not be far behind. You will feel the internal resistance and the lie that it can’t be done.
We need to be ready to get to work (with the shovel of hard labor) while still being ready to wield the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Speak life, speak God’s promises over you, and commit yourself to the work knowing that the battle is the Lord's and with God, you can defeat an army. (2 Chron 20:15, Ps 18:29)
5. Know the Forgiveness & Acceptance That is Fully Yours Through Jesus
When you know who you are and whose you are, how loved and valuable you are, it frees you to love and operate from a place of abundance and not lack or need.
You’ll show up in the world differently, able to love well because you know that you are loved well.
The Time to Rise Up
As we stop looking at the pain of the past and take these steps to move into greater faith and an identity rooted in Christ, our hearts can find the healing God purposed through it all along.
The weariness will begin to lift and in its place, peace and trust in the God who has never left us will begin to well up in our spirit giving us renewed energy and a desire to live and thrive again.
If our greatest good–the salvation of the world–came from the most gruesome and excruciating death on a cross, we can only imagine all the good that God is going to do with the collective deaths that we have all just lived through.
Beloved, it’s time to take off the sackcloth and ashes, to rise up, and begin to build again. God is here with healing in his wings.
“He has sent me to tell those who mourn that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.” Isaiah 61:2
AMY DEVORE
Amy DeVore encourages women to rise up, use their voices, and step into their Kingdom callings. She is the author of The Little Book to Rise Up: 7 Steps to Exit Your Wilderness & Step Into Your Promised Land, and is following God’s lead to travel. She is currently living in Guatemala. Find Amy on Instagram @amymariedevore & @riseupwomenco + TikTok @riseupwomenco.
