A broken heart

I am afraid of a broken heart.  A broken heart as I see it defined in verse 17 is scary to me.  Here is a sample of the Hebrew meaning as given by Strong's concordance:

to break, break in pieces; break, break in or down, rend violently, wreck, crush, quench; to break, rupture'; to be broken, be maimed, be crippled, be wrecked; to be broken, be crushed; to shatter, break; to cause to break out, bring to the birth; to be broken, be shattered .

Contrite on the other hand means:

caused by or showing sincere remorse; filled with a sense of guilt and the desire for atonement; penitent: a contrite sinner.

I can relate to contrite.  I can't relate to broken heart.  Yet it appears from the psalm that God requires both.  It's not an either or proposition.  You must be contrite and have a broken heart.

I've thought about that for quite a while.  I've thought about times my heart was broken and crushed.  I've thought about the pain that experience brought to my life.  There was nothing about any of it that was good.  Yet we have God's word in Romans 8 that He will bring something good out of it.  I have His word in verse 17 that he requires it of me.

So  here I sit.  I don't know what to do.  My heart has been sufficiently insulated from the breath of life for so long, it's difficult to imagine anything else.  Yet in the last year, I've begun the process of opening my heart to experience the full range of emotions God has gifted us with.  There are times I think I'm making progress.  There are other times I am regressing.  There are times I'm doing nothing.  The overall direction is good and I'm not seeing the same scenery all the time, so I know I'm not going in circles!  But this broken heart thing ... I don't know about that.

Lord:  I don't know what to do with this broken heart thing.  I don't know how to communicate what I feel at the deepest level about the things that are important.  Please help me!