Heart Wounds
Rev. Dr. Steven Koski
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The Bible says, Above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it.” Guarding your heart is acknowledging heart wounds. Physical wounds are visible. We wear bandages and are quick to tell their stories.
Heart wounds often hide in fear and shame. It is hard to heal a heart wound we pretend doesn’t exist. If we ignore heart wounds they become “infected” and contagious.
Heart wounds are not healed with the same logic we use to heal physical wounds. The paradox is the best guard for our hearts is vulnerability. A physical wound may need to be covered. Heart wounds need space to speak their truth.
Danna Faulds’ poem Allow says,
“There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt, containing a tornado. Dam a stream and it will create a new channel. Resist, and the tide will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry you to higher ground. The only safety lies in letting it all in – the wild and the weak; fear, fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of the heart, or sadness veils your vision with despair, practice becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your known way of being, the whole world is revealed to your new eyes.”
We guard each other’s hearts remembering not all wounds are visible. Every day we meet someone falling apart who looks all together. Those who seem happiest may be the saddest. Those who joke the most may cry themselves to sleep. Behind the widest smiles may be a broken heart. Behind the “perfect life” is a life struggling.
Guarding our hearts is holding one another’s heart without judgment and with tenderness and care. A wounded heart held in love can speak its truth and that truth may set it free to put the pieces back together into a new way of being.