I did the whole Christian-teenage thing where I read all of Josh Harris’ books about kissing dating goodbye and preparing your heart to meet your prince charming. Now before you’re like, “Oh gosh, not another one of those blogs about why Christians should/shouldn’t date/get married,” let me tell you that this post doesn’t really have anything to do with that.
I’ve been speculating a lot over the past year about how people, especially Christian girls, are constantly told to protect our hearts. Protect our hearts from all the evil boys out there who want to woo you with words and walk away, and guys from that girl who will lead you astray. Or we should protect our hearts from harmful friendships with gossips or, worse, liberals! (GASP!) Okay, I hope you’re sensing at least a little bit of sarcasm there. I guess I’m just feeling like I’ve been fed into the wrong way of thinking about relationships.
One of the things that I’ve always loved about my roommate is the way she loves people. She gets up in their junk, breathes in their life, consumes their stories. She loves deeply and non-fearfully. I’ve talked with her about it and she says that it’s not kicks and giggles all the time. As she and I sometimes must admit, “People suck.” When you choose to invest your time, energy, and sometimes life into someone, it means that you’re literally parting with a little piece of yourself.
Something I’ve learned this year through my roommate, friends, and especially being an RA is that people are really messy. I mean like, hose-you-down-with-a-garden-hose filthy. We have baggage that we carry around like it’s the latest fall trend and ideas and beliefs that make other people uncomfortable and problems with commitment and problems with our faith and unwillingness to change and we sometimes intentionally hurt the people around us and refuse to challenge our own beliefs and discourage our friends’ greatest dreams and wait to unload our life stories until 2 am and forget to be grateful… basically, if you love someone, you’re going to get mixed up in all that junk, and it’s going to hurt sometimes.
This is what makes me think that one of the greatest lies I’ve ever been told is that I should protect my heart. I know Proverbs 4:23 and I’m not disagreeing that the “wellspring of life” overflows from the heart. But if the wellspring of my life overflows from my heart, then I would want it to be a testimony to the love I’ve offered. The fact of life is that this is a broken world full of broken people and if we try to protect ourselves from hurt, then we’re only further separating ourselves from people God loves.
This year I’ve learned a tiny bit of what it means to love till it hurts. There have been a few nights that I’ve stayed up and just cried because I’ve had the opportunity to get to know people and their pain (and I try not to cry. It’s a waste of time… just kidding… sort of). I’ve tried to stop seeing “people who need to be saved” and just see people with stories. When you get rid of that wall of protection and kick all the “Jesus loves you” lines and really and truly let your heart get entangled with the questions, anger, and injustice that people feel towards God, your heart is going to break. But if you can keep your heart open long enough to let pain in, you’ll also experience how merciful, fulfilling, and ever-present God is.
This year, God is showing me how important it is that I ask hard questions and get involved in unlikely relationships because protecting my heart, at the end of the day, isn’t completely my job. There’s a beautiful quote from Mother Teresa: “May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in.” I mean, that doesn’t sound like Big Mama T was too concerned with protecting her wellspring of life from anything uncomfortable…
I will tell those of you who braved this rant up to this point that I don’t have this all figured out. I have been overwhelmed by the pain God opened me up to. But time and time again, I feel God telling me that if we want to truly experience His power and presence, we need to understand the pain of this world and His healing power. Again, I’m still learning and I’m sure I’ll make a ton of mistakes along the way, but I’m continually humbled and amazed by the realness of God and His desire to love. And that definitely makes the pain worth it.
Tammi Talk 