Matters of the heart…
“It is wonderful what God can do with a broken heart, if He gets all the pieces.” Samuel Chadwick
How’s your heart?
That is such a better question than “How are you?” Don’t worry. I know I’ve ranted about being a good question asker enough. But hey…why not try it. Ask that question and see what happens.
Let me tell me about my heart since I know you’d ask such an intriguing question.
My heart is…growing.
Growing in the wonder of my Creator as I spend time with incredibly smart, wise, generous humans.
Growing in its ability to guide my physical self through training pain. I am excited about this CrossFit season. Coach might be rolling his eyes as we have discovered I cannot read workouts accurately. The word burpee seems to be invisible to my eyes. Regardless of that small but often significant omission in training, growth is happening. I feel it. My heart is growing into its inherent power.
Growing in peace and contentment with myself.
Growing in assurance of what I want. In vocation, relationships, health and time freedom.
Growing in understanding that life is not comfort-centric but growth-centric. And growth is uncomfortable, even painful…most of the time.
Growing in trust that everything that happens is FOR me not to me. All things are working for my good.
So is your heart broken? Has it been broken? Only the lion-hearted, those worthy of a hat tip, an approving nod would ask that question off the hop. :)
Broken hearts come in all forms and for infinitely various reasons. Loss of love, absence of love, transactional love and all the love derivatives, of course, are the most common. How about a diseased body, a diseased mind (the two usually keep close company), work stress, financial stress, all of life’s curve balls.
In truth we all live with a heart that is breaking or broken over some dimension of our life. It’s the feeling of incompleteness we, as humans, cling to. Like a broken glass letting its content leak and drip out, so our feelings of “not enough” come from something seeping out of the cracks in our heart.
There is one thing common to all broken hearts. The possessor of the broken heart consented to its breaking. You cannot break my heart. I allow myself to feel broken. And it’s a good thing. How else can I come to know what I do not want in my life and then turn to what I do want? I am grateful my heart gives me such valuable intel.
Easy to do? Keep patching up the heart? Not at all.
My heart is growing…and as it does, it glues the cracks together.
Romans 8:38-39 “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
To manage the matters of your heart, remind yourself of this; not death, life, angels, rulers, powers, height, depth, things now or yet to come nor anything that is created can separate you from the love of an intelligent, responsive Energy (God in my world) who showed us how to live in this world through Jesus of Nazareth. That covers fallen angels and fallen mankind.
Good questions…
