When You’re Tired of Your Heart Getting Hurt: The Secret to the Good Life by ANN VOSCAMP
L
et your heart live unguarded — and you let love capture you.I wrote that one down on a piece of paper.
Folded it up and stuck it in my back pocket, like I had been given the answers to the only test I’ve ever needed to pass.
Live with an unguarded heart — and you let love capture you.
Live with an unguarded heart — and you let love capture you.
But I turned to a friend after dinner a few weeks ago, when we were walking back down the street, straight into the wind, and I straight up told her that I didn’t care what that study note had to say about acing this living and loving thing — I needed a shield or two to protect my heart.
“Put your heart out on a table — and it might get mistaken for dinner. It might get cut up and eaten alive.” I didn’t tell her how my own heart burned from razor-sharp words.
Didn’t tell her who had said what, didn’t tell her how I had looked in a mirror, brushed back whatever was leaking and spilling and I had vowed — Don’t put your heart down on the table again — or it will get knifed.
I mean — I knew it with my head:
Transparency is the glass door that opens up a house of trust so you get to live in love.
But my tender and busted heart?
The head can know wisdom — but the heart knows its wounds.
There are women who walk around with parts of themselves wounded and missing. But they have found their soul, their way — they have found the good life.
Mama serves me her soup. She looks me in the eye and my mama reads my pain, all the liquid heartbreak that I keep blinking back.
“You know — living ‘light and polite’ is not really living.” Living ‘light and polite’ can be a way of keeping everyone in the dark about what’s in your heart.
Living ‘light and polite’ can be a way of keeping everyone in the dark about what’s in your heart.
Her words rise like steam from the soup.I nod and I know it and Mama knows what I’ve been up to. Politeness can be a cheap shield to protect your heart. And shields to protect hearts end up being prisons for hearts. But, I’m just being blunt honest when I say there are days I’d rather my heart be in a prison of my own making, than be chopped liver in anyone else’s hands.
“Look, Mama. Live like glass? Be transparent? And you can find yourself shattered.” I find Mama’s eyes.
“Let people see past the surface, past your mask, even past your thoughts —- and let people actually see your heart? An exposed heart — can end up an executed heart. Having a glass heart — can leave you cut.”
I’m telling you: Transparency can feel like a death trap.
And for a bowl of soup, my Mama gives me my birthright. She says it slow — so I don’t miss it, so I get back in touch with what matters, can be nourished by it.
“Paying attention to hearts — is the only way to spend your life well.”
She reaches over and touches my hand. Her amputated finger lays on top of mine. The woman knows.
I have no idea if Mama had ever read about a 75 year study of the lives of Harvard students — but when her scarred and amputated finger rests there on the back of my hand, I can’t help but think of the results of one of the longest longitudinal studies ever conducted:
“Close relationships, more than money or status, are what keep people happy throughout their lives,” the study revealed. “Those ties protect people from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes.”
Good relationships is the only way to the good life.
Good relationships is the only way to the good life.
Tying our hearts to other hearts — turns out to be our best lifeline.
Mama’s tracing the back of my hand with her hand — with her one scarred and amputated finger.
The best stewardship of time — is making time for relationship.
Even when it wounds.
“Loneliness is as deadly as smoking or alcoholism,” the director of the world-famous study had reported.
Mama’s watching my eyes.
Don’t doubt for a moment: Loneliness kills.
Don’t doubt for a moment: Loneliness kills.
Mama, her hand stretched across the table, she’s showing me how to reach out — and hold on.
I can see it in her brave face, right there in her warm, wise eyes:
The secret to healthy aging is healthy relationships, healthy relationships, healthy relationships.
Old age can’t keep you from love — but love can keep you from aging poorly.
This is worth the risk. I keep trying to tell my bruised heart this. To risk loving one another is our greatest safety, and to fearfully try protecting our hearts is our gravest error.
I watch Mama ladle out more bowls of soup, set them around the table, watch how she lives given.
How she lives wide-open, lives like a gift.
Mama sets the last bowl down.
And she lays it all down:
“Live with walls to block out pain — and you will block out all the love that’s trying to get in.
Live with walls to block out pain — and you will block out all the love that’s trying to get in.
”Light floods the kitchen, the table, and I claim my birthright:
You have to let the love in. Open your arms wide open — live formed like a cross, cruciform — and let the love in.
I had laid in a hospital bed this summer with heart failure and I know it with all my heart. When your heart is kinda failing — the tendency is pull your arms and self-protect, shield, guard, mask your one broken, failing heart. But, Mama, she’s right.
If you build walls around your heart? No love can get to your heart, no healing can get to your heart.
No one tells you that the walls you build to protect your heart — end up being the walls that imprison your life. The walls you’re building to keep the hurt out — are the same walls that keep the healing from getting in.
Yeah, Mama — Live with walls to block out pain — and you will block out all the love that’s trying to get in.
What every broken heart needs —- is to break down their self-protecting walls.
What every broken heart needs — is to to be vulnerable enough to share their brokenness.
You will see as much healing in your life — as you let people see the brokenness in your life.
You are as healable —- as you are vulnerable.
You are as healable —- as you are vulnerable.
I now look in the mirror and search that face with a question: Can you believe your heart is a gift?
Your gift is not what you do —- but who you are. And who He is in you. And He is making your heart into a gift.
Believe. Be The Gift.
You give what’s good when you give what’s in your hands — but you give what’s eternal when you give what’s in your heart.
Believe. Be the Gift.
The only real gift you can give is a bit of your heart. The purpose of your life is to find your gift — and give it away.
Believe. Be the Gift.
What do you do with your one broken heart?
You give it away.
This is what you have to remember to always do with a broken heart:
You be the gift — and you live cruciform and you give your one broken heart away.
Give your heart to God in endless thanksgiving. And then give your broken heart to a hurting world in intentional acts of generosity, vulnerability, and transparency — so that you are healed with what always most heals a heart: intimacy.
Mama steps in and puts her arms around my shoulders, and she whispers it there at my ear, like an epiphany of light that could burns down all the walls:
“Your job is not to find love. Your job — is to find all walls you’ve built to keep love out.”
“Your job is not to find love. Your job — is to find all walls you’ve built to keep love out.”
I reach my hand out to grab hers.
And this is always what happens: When you reach out and offer yourself like a gift — you break down the walls that are keeping the love out.
And in that moment — I see what Mama has done with her life.
What every woman has wanted for her life:
True — she’s wanted to be brave. True, she’s wanted to be the weakness of the best kind of strong. But most of all — she’s wanted to become love. She’s wanted to be a gift — to her people, to the world. She’s wanted to reach out and be the gift — and break down the walls that have kept love out.
Because there’s no better way any woman can imagine to live — than to be a gift.
The good life lives given. Because Love is a verb and that verb is given and for God so loved the world — He gave. Love lives given.
Mama smiles. And every reaching wrinkle for every smiling woman — is a testament to her reaching out — and the love getting in.
There is no becoming old — as much as there is becoming a gift.
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