Guard your Heart!

I remember sitting at a bible study in college and hearing this advice. It was during the days of I Kissed Dating Goodbye. [Anyone remember this gem? :) ] Of course it was a bible study for “young singles” and we were talking about the pitfalls of dating and “giving away pieces of your heart too soon”. Even outside of church, I can, in fact, remember the many times that I received these words from well meaning loved ones. At the time I thought it made perfect sense. Be careful with your heart. Don’t get yourself hurt. Be on guard and make sure you only love those that are worthy of your love. The older I get however, I am learning that this advice, while well meaning, can be slightly misinterpreted. (Caveat: It goes without saying that in cases of physical safety, abuse, etc. one needs to protect him or herself. Also, one of the most important lessons in life is sometimes to learn to walk away when enough is enough and know how to love yourself enough to know when you are being respected and when you are not. Okay. caveat over.)

It seems to me (or I can say it has been my own personal experience) that this advice can lead to unnecessary guilt, the impression that if we love another person and for whatever reason the relationship does not work out and we get hurt, that it must be our own fault. We should have seen it coming. We should have guarded our heart better. We should have learned our lesson from the last time. In addition to guilt over seemingly reckless love, on the other extreme these words can also cause us to be too cautious and not give love a chance. We don’t want to have our heart broken, so it is better to keep our heart locked up and at the end of the day, if our heart is intact, safe and comfortable, we have won. Ignorance is bliss, as they say.

I remember the first time I had my heart truly broken. It was the summer of 2004 and I had spent 6 weeks living in Smokey Mountain, at one time, one of the largest active garbage dumps in the world, located in Manila, The Philippines. Over the course of the six weeks I had fallen in love with two little girls, Mia and Ella. Every day at the end of the day Mia’s mom had to come drag her out of my family’s small home so that I could go to bed. And many mornings I awoke to her beautiful face peaking over the top of the stairs at me to see if I was awake, “Ate Emily? Magandang umaga!” I had fallen in love with both of them and spent many an afternoon playing with them until I was exhausted. 

It was the day we were leaving and I remember trying to find them, terrified that I would have to leave without saying goodbye. As my team gathered in the jeepney to go, I delayed as long as I could, waiting to give them one last hug. They finally appeared and after many tears and hugs I finally climbed into the jeepney and we started to drive away. As I looked back on my community, I saw Mia and Ella start to run after the jeepney, as fast as their little legs could carry them, “Ate Emilyyyyy!!!! Ate Emilyyyy!!!” And that was it. That was the moment when my heart first shattered into a million pieces (some of which are still no doubt laying in and among the dirt and dust of Smokey Mountain). But in that moment of total and utter devastation, a still small voice said to me, “Now you know my heart for the world. Now you know what it is like, even in a small part, to love like I love.” I carry those words with me until today to remind me that if we are indeed called to love like God loves, it will mean that we get our heart broken. It means that we will risk hurting and being hurt, experience the highest highs and the lowest lows, abundant life and abundant sadness.  We will laugh and dance and sing and we will weep and we will sob. We will win and we will fail. But at the end of the day, we will experience the heart of God. In the words of C.S Lewis...

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intake, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly save from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”- C.S Lewis, The Four Loves

May we all have the courage to get our hearts broken...