A Broken Heart

My son, he breaks my heart. This is a hard thing to describe, but I know it is important, so bear with me while I digress. I want so very badly to get this just right.

What does “a broken heart” mean? I know it’s a phrase used when describing how you feel after a romance ends. That connotes the disappointment, I suppose? It is the way of every loving relationship to be disappointed, though, not just relationships that hinge on “romance”. You can only have your heart broken by those you love. Our parents will always eventually let us down and break our hearts. Our friends, lovers, too.

Our children, in a different way. They come to us as unblemished as anything in the world ever does. When we fall in love, there is always a little bit of the overlooking of faults, an idealizing. From infatuation, or maybe denial. Perhaps it’s the genetic imperative to mate that allows us to label eccentricities as charming rather than annoying. So with kids, they are the ideal, and in love, the illusion of the same.

Paul says hope is a kind of love; I think it is the best of his three to describe the traditional “falling in love” love. The thrill of romance resides in the hope that it will stay good, get better, succeed, and satisfy. With our kids, they start out with no faults. We are filled with hope for them, and fear of what the world will do. But we inhabit a mortal world, and their growing means their making mistakes, so our hearts are broken, over and over.

But the scriptures also talk about a broken heart, and a contrite spirit. In the Psalms, it calls that the offering to the Lord. “The sacrifices of God are … a broken and a contrite heart,” (Psalms 51:17). I don’t think that speaks to the disappointment kind of heartbreak, but to being humble. Curbing one’s pride, and bowing your knee to God’s will. Offering your heart to God, rather than keeping it stony in arrogance. The hard heart can bear or hear no guidance, but the broken one will heed the still, small voice.

My son is singing in the Maryland State Boychoir. A “Boy’s Choir” is one comprised only of boys (duh), but spans the age-range from the very young to the very mature, such that it can fill all four parts of any harmony. It’s still the alto part when a boy sings it, but when a boy sings the soprano part, they call that the “treble” instead. A good Boychoir sounds great, and this one sounds amazing.

At least, I’d suspected they do. Prior to last Sunday, I’d never actually heard them perform. Our harrowing schedule made it barely possible for us to truck him back and forth to rehearsals and concerts; in the months since he’s joined, we’ve never been able to actually schedule free time for us to attend anything. So my opinion was based on the soaring phrases I’d heard coming from their practice room, and the brief snippets they have on their web-site.

Finally, last week I got to attend a concert. They were doing the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. It is a structured performance that features speakers reading from the Scriptures, and the Boychoir singing carols or hymns with the audience.

The church was beautiful, and completely packed. I felt terribly lucky to have tickets for seats only six rows back. I had never attended one of these services, and so was unprepared for the clever way they started it. They choir entered the chapel from the back, singing as they walked. “Once in Royal David’s City”, the first verse sung only by the treble choir, so the piercing, pure, and simple melody was alone, and instantly hushed the crowd.

It might be a simple theatric strategy, to surprise an audience by the performance coming at them unseen, but boy it worked. As those three lines were sung, I could feel emotion welling in my throat. Max wasn’t singing yet, but I knew he would be on one of the coming choruses.

It was a song about a mother and her son, about the son’s potential. All the tender, break-your-heart reality of the parent/child dynamic swooped through me during that verse. I thought of my son, singing in this magnificent church, with this amazing choir. My son, who sometimes disappoints me, but far more often amazes me, for whom I want nothing but joy in life. I thought of all the things I had ever done wrong with him, the misspoken over-reactions, the times I was angry when I should have been sensitive, when I talked and should have listened. I was consumed with the fervent hope that I would be good for him, that my faults wouldn’t get in the way of his happy life. My love for him filled me until it felt like my heart was straining to contain it.

And then, the full choir began to sing the second verse with all the timber of their full range. “He came down to earth from heaven!” Their volume and the rich, rich mixing of their amazing voices felt like a physical presence, a breeze stirring the air of the church. Tears, brimming at the corners of my eyes, ran down my cheeks.

Life is a glorious, painful, beautiful labor. I turned slightly to see if I could see Max coming down the aisle. He moved slowly by, eyebrows furrowed slightly from the attention he was paying to walking, singing, not making mistakes. I don’t think he saw me. Maybe he saw me, but was solemnly not waving hello to his audience.

And my straining heart broke. My son, singing in this choir with his fervent concentration, exercising a talent of such capacity I cannot quite grasp how good he really is. He is my son, come from me. But here, this day, he has made me, made of my heart, an offering to the Lord.

I thought how so much more our relationships with our children end up being fraternal than paternal. Our children consume our lives and years, which is as it should be, but in the end they are not “ours”, we do not earn the right to “keep” them. We love them, and are made better by their successes and increase, but we know they will go on to belong to their own families and children.

Thank you my son for letting me be a part of this wonderful opportunity of yours.

You can listen to some more of their music here.