You have to start with what’s in your heart.
It’s a test, this life. It’s a test that keeps asking the question, “what’s in your heart?” And you have to keep answering... so you either tell the truth or you find lies to fill the space. Every moment is another question. And every moment is another answer.
Sometimes when the information stops coming at you long enough and the night is quiet, the heart speaks truth. It tells you what you desire the most. It gives you a vision of what it’s really about. It shows you what you should be doing with your one life.
And then it whispers… “you know what to do.”
Everyday there are a million reasons to feel heartbroken. This world is full of people who make choices that make you cry. People who do things to other people… to themselves. Every minute of everyday God’s heart is breaking open. Can you feel it? Or have you numbed yourself to it? Either response is appropriate given the enormity of the grief.
And we have this one life. And this endless question that taunts us in the middle of the quiet night… the night with no cocktail party, no TV, no earlier-argument swirling around in my head. This is a place where theology has no traction… too watery.
It’s just me listening to my heart show me my desire for this world.
My simple, unobtainable desire for this world that I was born into. And the heartbreak that happens over and over again as my head tries to tell my heart to give up… it’s no use.
And in response it whispers… “you know what to do.”
And a part of me is back in the garden, wanting to spit it out… wishing that I had the life promised to me by the TV-sitcom-twinkie-gapjeans-personalbanker-scrubbingbubbles pretty world of personal choice.
But that’s what it is, isn’t it… a personal choice. Every moment is a personal choice to hear that heartbeat… broken or not. This heartbeat that we share with our brothers and sisters. The singular heartbeat that always speaks truth even when we would rather tell ourselves lies.
And so the other part of me is rejoicing in the freedom of a cleansed heart that knows truth.
It’s a picture of justice,
A sound of caring,
A smell of brightness,
A feel of beauty,
And a taste of love.
You know it when you experience it. Your heart knows home.
Because in the end, it’s about what’s in your heart. That’s what it’s always been about.
M.