“Above else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows
from it.” Proverbs 4:23
I’ve never been very good at protecting my heart… Every time I have suffered a disillusionment
my sister tells me that I have to learn to find someone who will love me first
before I get emotionally involved. I
know she is trying to be helpful, but her words only make me feel like more of
a failure. If only I had an impenetrable
shield then hurt would never enter and she would never have to see me in
pain. Her reaction is typical in our
culture to harden our hearts or develop “thick skin.” Yet, I don’t want to train myself to live in
numbness with fear of the troubles that openness and vulnerability can bring. God liberated my hard heart from an unbreakable prison state and going back is not something that I see myself doing. I have been delivered, unshackled and the
weakness that I sometimes experience when disappointment comes knocking at my
door is to be met with same hope that led the Apostle Paul to declare, "He said to me, “My grace
is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”" Even when we are bad at guarding our hearts,
Jesus still has the antidote.
It’s good to work on being prudent and guarding our hearts
ahead of time, but when we suck at it (like me) God will get us through the
temporal ache. In this world we are
going to experience pain in all types of forms and situations – and loss in many
different ways. BUT, we are never left alone to carry our cross, God promised
to be with us until the end of time.
Sometimes our minds will want to focus on the darkness, but Christians
were made for the light. We are carriers
of the God News sealed with the Holy Spirit!
When my ex-boyfriend ended our relationship and soon after my brother
died I went into the darkest place I have ever been. In the years since I have worked hard to
protect myself from that kind of pain, afraid that another heartbreak would
break me like it did then… Today I know that hurt is inevitable,
but on this day I can boast of having a God whose power is greater than my
weakness. Just now I realized that as
long as my eyes stay fixed on the Lord, no matter what happens I am going to be
ok. It’s not easy to be bipolar and not
like unexpected things to happen – it makes me a little of a control freak
sometimes- but am learning that NOW my faith is the difference. I went into a dark place before because I
didn’t have faith, I didn’t have a God of hope with me. Yet, even then when my heart was closed to
Him, He came and found me. There will
always be the temptation to lose hope, to succumb to self-pity and negativity;
but now I know better. Now, I cling to the Lord. I needed a morning of prayer to come to this conclusion. "Si se que te tengo a Ti (Dios), no nesecito mas."
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