The Heart

The heart is a funny thing…I don’t get it. Personally I believe my confusion about it or at least my willingness to ignore it has really done some damage to it. I believe my real problem (or the root of the problem) isn’t from it being hurt by others (although that has happened a few times), but that I’ve been conditioning myself to ignore it. Over the past few years I’ve start to see that I am an extremely emotional person or at least more so than I thought. I always assume that since my reactions to certain things whether good or bad never resulted in an outburst of emotion that I in fact wasn't emotional. However if I'm being honest with myself when things go wrong while little is outwardly shown, inside even small things really rip me apart and major things can cause heartache that will last for a long time.

I believe that some of this (certainly not all) is founded in my youth. I was the youngest and the only boy, which put me in a unique situation. I would worry constantly whether or not when I would copy my sisters if that was something that guys would do. As a result I decided at a rather young age to try to always do the complete opposite of my sisters. One thing that I still remember is the use of lotion…they used it all the time, but I never saw my dad use it. Thus I concluded that it must not be a guy thing, and I should avoid it all costs. My sisters would try to put it on me, and I would fight them to keep it away from me (my resistance only encouraged them to do it more often). After some time they began to ask why I was so afraid of lotion…not wanting to say that I didn’t know if guys could use it, I responded with it gives you cancer.

Anyway so from this time period I also started to think that it was important to not show any emotion because that is what girls do. When I was young I really had to try not to cry or show others that what they did truly hurt my feelings, but now there truly isn’t any effort. I’m almost shocked if my true feelings are shown…it no longer is a desire for me to hide them it just simply is the way I am. This obviously has a rather negative effect on basically every relationship in my life. Friends and family it doesn’t help, but for the most part they have gotten to know me and realize that I’m a good guy with a kind heart. However when it comes to dating I believe this is truly a crippling problem.

You see when your natural instincts are to hide all feelings it tends to prevent the girl from opening up and putting her heart into the relationship. This would be bad if that just kept me from falling for someone, but the real dilemma is that I will fall for her while keeping her at a distance. Then either the potential relationship will simply die and I won’t do anything to prevent it (since I’m emotionally closed off from it) or if I'm really interested I will open up in an attempt to fix things. In the first case that simply has me ruin plenty of potential relationships by draught, while with the second I kill it with a flood. A good relationship will have a gradual progression with a balance of give and take...my two options don't work like that and both result in the killing of the relationship.

Now I look for a resolution to this problem. I do believe that I have come along way towards understanding my heart and being able to be more open and honest with those in my life. Actually two books by John Eldredge (Wild at Heart and Waking the Dead) have really helped me with understanding my own heart and I recommend them to anyone (especially guys). In Wild at Heart he states that …”in the heart of every man is a desperate desire for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue.” Honestly I think that really does sum up the desires of my heart. Unfortunately he also manages to make a good case for the need to battle for man’s heart before these desires can be realized, which I haven't done since I don't even know my own heart. Right now in my life I don’t see even a focus for any of those three desires in spite of my knowledge that I have them, but I do believe that one day that will change.