"Follow your heart," some people say as their best bit of advice. What they don't know is that sometimes our heart can be tricky, crafty, and full of stupid crap it might have learned while your momma was watching General Hospital.
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9.
Being ruled by flesh and emotion can cause irreparable damage. Ask people who traded in their wife and children for some good times, who are in prison for bad choices, who thought by following their heart they were serving some kind of higher purpose, only to lose their way completely.
"Don't forget who you are," our friend Martin says often.
This is easy to do when you are trying to escape the pressures of everyday family life, of a life that hasn't turned out like you expected, of a life that is really hard, even when you've worked your tail off to make things go smoothly. Mostly, it is when we forget to be grateful that our heart turns on us. When all our hard work hasn't paid off. When the often unrealistic expectations of ourselves and others becomes a heavy weight. When pride tells us we deserve more, instead of humbly receiving what is given to us.
So, as Chloe Curiel says, "Follow your heart, but only the part that Jesus lives in."
And, maybe, just maybe, you won't have to learn who you are the hard way.
Loving. Learning. Worshipping. Wondering. Railing. Hoping. Holding on. Letting go.
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