For a week I've been pondering the broken heart. Yesterday I wrote of reconciliation and how I have guarded my heart, as if having my heart broken might be the worst thing that could happen. Experiencing a broken heart is one of the worst experiences most of us can remember.
Causing a broken heart can be equally painful. For me, it was worse to watch someone I loved wriggle in anguish and to know that I caused the pain. As I reflect, that may have hardened my heart as much as having my own heart broken. I don't ever want to do that again...ever. Maybe that is why I haven't found love in 20 years. Maybe it is that I have been as frightened of breaking a heart as having my own be broken.
So what has caused this recent pondering of the broken heart? "The babies" that I spent time with last weekend reinitiated me in the feeling of true love in my heart. Each time I would hug/be hugged love would just wash over me. I literally felt like I was falling in love, just as with the romantic kind. My heart would swell. I'd have butterflies in my stomach and a tickle in my throat. I woke up each day eager to hold them again.
I remember hugging the little one on Sunday morning as she giggled with glee. This, I thought, is what it feels like to be in love. It had been such a long time that I'd forgotten. I was totally present and in the moment without another thought other than relishing the feeling.
Almost in its wake though was the thought: I really need a broken heart. Not the guarded find that I have long feared. What I need is for my heart to break open--to be so full of love that it just explodes with joy--I thought. Perhaps that is what love is: love is the willingness to make ourselves vulnerable to breaking open for that is how love flows between us.
I have written a lot about feeling that God is the flow of love from heart to heart to heart. When my heart broke open with love last weekend was as close as I've felt to God in a very long time. What a gift a heart broken open can be. It literally allows us to be God for we cannot experience God from the recesses of a locked and guarded heart.
AHHHHmazing work! Your comment about pain of breaking someone else's heart really resonated. I have done a lot of work on the wounding of my heart and I realized in your words that I have been so careful not to hurt others that I have used that to keep from being as authentic as I can be. I commit to full on sharing myself in unconditional love space.
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