The Man in the Attic
I recently ran across a fascinating news story. Apparently, a fourteen-year-old Tennessee girl fell in love with an eighteen-year-old man. That, in and of itself, is not the fascinating part. It gets better.
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When the girl’s parents discovered the
attraction, they forbade their daughter to see the young guy after the happy
couple attempted to run away together. True love was not to be thwarted,
however. Unbeknown to the teenage girl’s parents, the young man took up
residence in their attic. There was a door to the attic in the young girl’s
bedroom closet, and he would sneak down every evening to (ahem) visit her.
Arrested and Hauled Away
I’m not sure how long this arrangement
lasted, but in my mind, it was doomed to be relatively short-lived. One
evening, the girl’s mother came home to find the young man standing at the top
of her stairs. Instead of running out the front door, back door, or through a
window, he retreated to the attic and refused to come out. Eventually, he was
arrested for trespassing and hauled away by the local gendarmes.
Not surprisingly, it has been reported that the man “has mental health issues.” If he didn’t have them prior to living in an attic, he certainly contracted them during his stay. Depending upon what sort of attic it was, it couldn’t have been all that conducive to a healthy lifestyle. Since the door to the attic was in a closet, I doubt it was a finished room with all the amenities.
It appears (at least for now) that the young couple’s hearts are destined to be broken. Broken-heartedness is a common human condition has been around for a long time. You may remember the story of Romeo and Juliet. That, of course, was a tragedy; but at least it was fiction. People with broken hearts have recourse, but many of them aren’t thinking straight enough to realize it.
Understanding the Broken Hearted
The book of Psalms has been around since the time of King David of Israel–circa 1000 BC (or BCE for you modernists). The psalmist realized that the Lord understands the broken-hearted. Furthermore, that same Lord binds up their wounds. Sounds like a plan…
The problem, of course, is that we have no way to bind up a broken heart. To have a broken heart is an emotional thing. There is no heart surgeon alive who can take care of that syndrome. Psychologists and psychiatrists, try as they may, can’t do it either. It’s a malady that goes beyond human understanding. We can diagnose it, but that’s as far as it goes.
If the psalmist is correct (and I assume he
is), the best physician for the condition of the broken heart is the Lord Himself.
We can try to help alleviate the situation, but seeking God in prayer seems to
give us the most direct access to the cure. I guess it stands to reason. God
created the human heart—He’s the best one to take care of it.
[Dave Zuchelli is a graduate of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and
currently resides in Aldie, VA.]
