Here, here it is, the organ that keeps my life moving, my heart. My heart is strong and beautiful as it pumps blood to every part of my body but the heart of my passions, my emotions and my love looks different. It’s the part that we hand out to others and the one that we see stabbed and broken because we seek for others to hold our heart in their hands and to love it, to care for it and to breathe more life into it. The heart is in every human being and it may look different physically as we age and come face to face with diseases that seek not only to take that physical heart but our emotional heart, that extends to our loved ones. There is something that is trying to take the beauty of our hearts, in all aspects, and dismantle it. This darkness does not just affect us, it affects all of the people who we have given our hearts to.

Giving your heart away can look different depending on who you give it to and why. Your first give was more than likely to the person who raised you and they got the whole thing. With your heart in their hands you saw it shift and change depending on the culture that you are in and the circumstances of life that violently interrupted and that could have been a bad thing. We as humans are relational people and we want to give our whole heart to everything that shows up into our lives until we experience the moment when someone takes advantage of having our heart. They let us down and that is when we enter into the cycle of brokenness and hurt that seems never ending.

Here...have my heart:

It is normal like everyone else’s but if you look close you will see these thin lines that have been put back together. You see, my heart has been broken and torn apart but usually our hearts stay that way but I gave my whole heart to someone who could take care of it. There are pockets where darkness used to dwell and holes where depression seeped through. There are scars of burns and a stream of longing running through it. My passions and dreams are kept in a box as they wait to come to life. Through all of that there is a heart waiting to jump into someone else’s life, to love them and to show them vulnerability. Don’t you know that when you love you become vulnerable and easily hurt? This is what happens when you hand your heart over. But I will continue to do it. Why? Because my heart has been mended and is constantly being cared for by a loving God who deserves my whole heart. My heart has seen its days but it has hope and is determined to see others healed and loved.

With the recent cultural tension in our country, we need to continually hand our heart over to people so that we are connected but know that you will be hurt but it should not keep you from loving. The hearts that have been mangled by this life are the most beautiful and they demand to be seen. When your heart heals remember that the scars will still hurt but it does not mean that you are still broken...but that you went through something and the pain that you have experienced is not the same pain of another person but it can be similar. Use that experienced heart to help someone else make it through. You never know who you can help save by just giving your heart away.