Open Heart Surgery
On the second of January year twenty-twelve, I realized I would be put through open-heart surgery (metaphorically speaking). It was very clear to me, and at first I was truly excited for what was in store because I knew I needed healing. At first, my prayers sounded like this: “Yes, open up my heart, it, heal it, and make it strong.” Little did I know that maybe not even a month later my prayers sounded more like: “HOLY CRAP?! What do you think you’re doing?! I don’t like this. This hurts. Okay, you can stop now.” I can laugh about it today because I feel I have been on the operating room table for almost three full years and I can see more of how this operation works.
When we ask to have our hearts opened, we open ourselves to a Master Surgeon - one who will remove, fix, or improve things on what is best. Have you ever asked to grow as a human and then found yourself in a more vulnerable place? An even rougher trial or lower point of life? Suddenly everything seems to rub you the wrong way and maybe even the things you struggle with seem to intensify a bit? Well, welcome to the operating table.
When you allow room to really work on your heart, you allow many different actions to take place. The hard places such as unforgiveness and bitterness will be cut away to show you how to truly love no matter what has been done to you. A light will be shone on the hidden places where you have kept your heavy shame and guilt to be able to grow in grace and mercy instead. Places where your pride and ego hide will be softened to make room for compassion and honor. The heavy feeling in your chest will be continually traded for rest and joy. Things will move, change, transform, and shape your heart - no matter how long it takes - as long as you are willing to lay on that table cut open.
Being on the operating table is vulnerability at one of its finest moments.
It takes courage and complete trust to lay with your whole self exposed in the light – but just remember in that moment that it is good.
In my own surgery I realized that when the surgeon started to poke around, all the junk in my heart came to the surface. I felt as if my struggles bubbled all the way to the top and suddenly it was all exposed to light and I had to fight shame to keep my vulnerability with others in the whole process. I still struggle with being on the table. I still would like to take control myself, but I do not even know all the hidden parts of who I am. I know we would all like to think we know ourselves to the very core, but I truly believe it is our Creator who wholly knows us. We have to find comfort and trust in that or else we will never be in such a place as an operating table because we will always be trying fix ourselves.
My challenge for all of us is to live wholeheartedly with with others. To do this, we need to ask for work to be done on our hearts to be whole. All of us have past heart wounds, lost passions, hidden dark places, and so much more; we need help to walk us through the growing, healing, transformation, and restoration of our hearts. Be open to what is available for us today. Be willing to lay yourself on that table for as long as it takes. I did not think I would be here for three years but, I have begun to realize that the operating table will be a lifelong place I come back to. If I know He is good and He has my best interest in mind why would I not put my heart back in the hands of the Creator who made it?
“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” EZ.36/26
If you want to go deeper in a new way, I challenge you to simply ask and act on working on your heart. Many things come out of our heart: words, actions, thoughts - so it is vital that we take the time to really explore it and check up on it.
Crawl onto that operating room table, that may seem a bit foreboding, and wait in anticipation and expectation that a work will be done - to create in you a new heart, ever growing, ever loving, ever full of brilliant light.
xx Liv