What does it mean to have a “broken heart”?

It means exactly that - you’ve had your heart broken. You’ve put your trust in something that ought not be trusted. You’ve believed something you should not have believed. You’ve followed something you should not have followed. And because you did these things, you came to the inevitable conclusion: your trust, your hope, your following, your belief, and your love were all betrayed. The thing that you wanted cannot happen, and your heart has been broken because of it.

And because your heart is broken, you may feel two ways:

  1. You are bitter. You are angry. You have been betrayed! And you seek to tear down the thing which betrayed you. But feeling this is folly, because you are allowing yourself to be acted upon. You see yourself as the victim.
  2. You are sorrowful, because you are not the victim: you are the perpetrator. You have no one to blame but yourself for your unbelief. And in the depths of your despair, you cry out and ask to be shown the better way, because your spirit is contrite.

I hope it’s the latter.