I Can Fix That, And Other Lies I've Loved

The first time I got my heartbroken, I was an absolute mess. It was almost comical. It would have been, in a chickflick. It would have been like that part in Legally Blonde where she’s eating ice cream and yelling at the TV. My version involved a lot of crying in stairwells, only eating Clif bars, writing pages and pages of burn letters, and getting very little sleep. After two months of this, a guy in an elevator said to me, “You should probably take a nap.”

As always, my approach to this new problem was research. I listened to podcasts and read blogs and scientific articles. (Did you know that heartbreak is a physical phenomena wherein, deprived of the dopamine and oxytocin the relationship provided you, your body freaks out? Tylenol helps.) In addition to online resources, I pursued more traditional modes of research: people. I asked advice from everyone, all the time. Someone would say, “Hey, how are you?” And I’d say, “Not great. How do you deal with heartbreak?” My favorite response was Bentley’s. He said, “Reread Harry Potter. You’ll feel better by the end.”

(Brilliant, because, of course, Harry Potter is essentially narrative comfort for someone my age, but also because it is long, and, yes, once you’ve had the time to read all of it, you probably will feel better. But also, it gives you marginal feelings of control—if you’re really not doing well, you can read faster, because you can tell yourself at the end it will better. Brilliant, Bentley.)

Harry Potter did help, but it didn’t fix it, and I wanted something, someone to fix it. I hounded my parents, a therapist, all of my friends. I asked questions like, “Why would he do that?” and “What should I do?” But what I was really saying, over and over again, was “Fix me. Please, please, fix me. Make it stop.”

My definition of idolatry is looking for things that can only be found in God in things that aren’t God. “Seek the Lord where he may be found,” Isaiah counsels (Isaiah 55:6), and for years I read that and thought of Jonah. God can be found everywhere. You can run, but you can’t hide. But Isaiah has a point: God may be accessible from everywhere, but that doesn’t mean we can find Him anywhere. If what I really need is some God-given mending, that stupid Netflix show I’ve been using to numb my emotions is probably not where I’m going to find it. And while therapy, scientific articles, and Avril Lavigne can help, it’s not going to be what fixes me.

“We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand,” Isaiah records (Isaiah 64:8). Only the potter can reform the clay. Only He can fix us when we’re broken. This is one of the things that I think the story of the ten virgins is about.

Ten Virgins Scott Sumner

There is some debate (there almost always is) about who is who and what they’re doing in this story, but, in this case, I pretty much don’t care. For our purposes, the ten young women are bridesmaids. They’re there for their friend’s wedding. After a long year of engagement, their friend is finally going to receive her groom who, according to custom, was coming on a specific day but not a specific hour. The women are out there to greet him, to perform a ceremonial duty of lighting his way to their friend. They’ll wait into the night if necessary.

The trouble is that half of the women’s lamps begin to go out, and they did not bring extra oil to light them. They’re not going to be able to perform their duty, to be there for the friend they love, to take part in the celebration. They beg their sisters to lend them some oil. Their sisters do not.

Spencer W. Kimball, president of the Church when my parents were teenagers, preached that the women who did not share did not make their choice out of "selfishness or unkindness,” but rather, “The kind of oil that is needed to illuminate the way and light up the darkness is not shareable. How can one share obedience to the principle of tithing; a mind at peace from righteous living; an accumulation of knowledge? How can one share faith or testimony?.... Each must obtain that kind of oil for himself” (Faith Precedes the Miracle 256).

This is the part that makes me remember idolatry. There are things only God can give us, and sometimes we look for them in the people around us. We make mortals our gods, when they cannot give us wholeness or peace or healing or a testimony. The women who tried to beg oil off their sisters were seeking for the Lord where they wouldn’t find Him. It was not that their sisters did not provide what the forgetful sister’s lacked, it was that they could not. We cannot be each other’s Gods. We can’t fix each other.

That does not mean, of course, that we can’t help. We cannot be their light in the darkness, but we can be the light bearers. One of the things I love about the Church is how much it tells us that we need each other. We cannot be saved without each other—but that is different than being able to save each other. Bentley, who told me to read Harry Potter; Kaylie who took me on long drives to shout songs; Melody who made me eggs when I was too nauseated to get out of bed; Ashley and Bryan who let me crash on their couch—all of these people carried light for me. None of them made me whole again.

This is important for me to remember, because I have a tendency to try and fix people. I see them in pain and, like the guy in Holes, I say, “I can fix that.” And sometimes I can help. Sometimes I can be a light bearer. But every time I’ve tried to be the light itself, every time I’ve really believed that I can fix it, it’s gone badly.

Five months after the break up, I was sitting in a work meeting, and I started crying, because I realized I was happy. I was happy not because anything had happened, just because I was, and that hadn’t happened in so long. The year before, God had told me, “You will never be so broken that I cannot fix you,” and that day He made good on His promise. He’d been the light in my darkness, borne by friends who carried lamps for me, and that day He showed me the way back to wholeness.