For months now, I can't seem to shake this thought: Only a forsaken God could understand my forsaken heart.

I have felt the suffocating feeling of abandonment. I've been discarded. Forgotten. Invisible.

I have known the despair of a shattered heart, the pieces too small to ever put back together. I've failed even at simply picking them all up.

I have been wounded, sometimes even deliberately, by those who claim to love me. And worse, to love Him. Almost nothing hurts more.

I have walked through the valley of the shadow of death. And I've teetered very close to the edge, in that darkest of places.

But, if I allow my heart to wander there, I know... So has He.

I think about Jesus in the garden, wanting desperately to find another way. I think of His heart, shattered by the abandonment of those He loves deeply. I think about Him on the cross, broken and in agony. And I think...

He gets it.

"My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?"

In that moment, Jesus---God with skin on---felt forsaken by God.

God abandoned Himself. And while there's no way on earth I'll ever comprehend that, I can't help but turn that thought over and over in my heart.

Only a God who's experienced the wretched pain of forsakenness could reach through the darkness of my pit and pull me out.

Only a forsaken God could understand my forsaken heart.

And if by His wounds I am healed, then maybe by His forsakenness I am found.

Desired.

Treasured.

Adopted.

Loved. Forever.

It's because He was forsaken, it's because of His suffering, that the brokenness of my heart finds solace in Him.

As Alfred North Whitehead said,

"God is the fellow-sufferer who understands.”