HEALING HEARTS

A BEAUTIFUL FRIEND OF MINE POSTED THIS ON HER BLOG TODAY. IT WAS EXACTLY WHAT IVE BEEN NEEDING TO HEAR THE PAST 2 YEARS...

The biggest temptation when we have been hurt is to close off our heart. Pain and hurt can come from just about anywhere, but it's usually the relationships that mean SOMETHING to us that cause us the most pain, that is how it has ALWAYS been with me anyway.

And when we get hurt, we want to NEVER be hurt again and protect ourselves. We want to wall ourselves in, but it also walls LIFE out. We might even try to "not care" anymore because CARING is why we got hurt in the first place, but these are all paths to loneliness, depression, anger, resentment, isolation and a dead heart.

Even when we are TRYING to do these things harmful things to ourselves and our relationships, God is still there. He stays after us to love again, to laugh again and to LIVE our lives out. He doesn't want little people with stone hearts, scowls on their faces and the absence of all joy. And believe me, it's NOT fun, I've tried it. I'm embarrassed to say that I've tried it WAY more than once too. I'm a slow learner. I tend to keep trying MY way until I just about can't take any more. Then I finally turn to the Lord and get the break-through, renewed hope and restoration I was so desperate for.

I want to encourage you to take heart, out of pain comes power for us if we choose to keep LIVING. Pain is a funny thing, not ha ha funny, but peculiar, it can actually take us to higher levels of glory and faith when we abide in God through it rather than trying to muscle our own way.

Psalm 147:3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

I remember once when I went to go encourage an elderly family member who was just home from the hospital. She ended up encouraging ME, even though she was the one who was facing a terminal disease. THIS is the kind of POWER that pain can produce. It's not something that we can see with our naked eye, but it's a deeping in our heart. Like we are all very shallow pools, but life comes with pains and hurt and our pools are dug out deeper and can hold more and more. But of WHAT it holds is what matters. Is your pool holding more and more pain? Or have you given that pain over to God for Him to do a wonderful work with it? With God, we are filled with understanding, empathy, sympathy and that beautiful glory that shines deep from the heart which is only purified by pains fire.

Some of the best things come from great pain, a mother laboring to deliver a child. The hard work to achieve the status of an olympian. A tender and kind heart, from being worked over with meat tenderizer! That's me.

God loves you too much to leave you where you are. He is constantly working to pull us up higher, to greater and greater things, even if it doesn't LOOK that great now, trust Him, and close your eyes if you have to, just don't close out your heart.

John 16:22 Therefore you now have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you

I love you and I'm praying for you, for God's love to wrap around you like a big poofy blanket and for His amazing peace to rest upon your anxious heart.

-CLC