Living With an Open Heart

Published in Mahomet Citizen
May 18, 2011

Living with an Open Heart

There’s not a whole lot I remember learning in kindergarten, but I remember that I had trouble drawing a heart. My hearts looked more like toast. At my teacher’s concern, I spent a whole afternoon at my parents’ red kitchen diner table learning how to make the hearts I drew point at the end.

Drawing is about the only heart concern a six-year-old has. I didn’t think about the condition of the heart again until my grandpa died of a heart attack when I was 8. My mother said a clot in his leg shot up to his heart while he was sleeping.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death in Americans. Because the heart distributes vital blood to other organs in our bodies, it is important we take care of it by not smoking, drinking, or doing drugs, eating a healthy diet low in fat and cholesterol, and exercising. It’s about life and death.

But even with knowing all of this heart-healthy advice, the wears and tears of life can make our hearts a mangled mess carrying hurts, burdens and scars. I used to have a friend who hurt so much that she said she felt like she could just disappear into her heart.

While our eating habits and drug problems may be a result of our unhealthy hearts, they aren’t the source. Most hurt doesn’t come from the strangers we watch from afar. Many times, the people who hurt us the most are the people who are a part of our everyday lives.

Well, being hurt by people who are supposed to love me is enough to make me skeptical of everyone. There are some things that I can’t forget. Some things that I know I’ve been burned on before; the things that make me watch my back. And so in this cycle, it is easy to put up a guard, to protect my heart with rose thorns, to only offer so much of myself to
others.

It was easier for me to live with that preemptive mentality toward everyone than it was to work through my issues. Because the truth is that they were mine. The things I held onto hurt me. They inhibited me. They held me back from discovering all the good things people have to offer. But once I took the time to let myself feel, to let myself grieve over the things that had happened and my losses, I was able to understand the healthy benefits of forgiveness.

I can say that in one sentence, but it is a lot of hard work. Sometimes it’s hard work that comes every day. There are some people I have to forgive as soon as I wake up every morning and before I go to bed at night. But I make the choice not to carry it with me.

The first thing I had to understand was that I can’t change other people. I could only work on me. Taking a step toward letting go of those layers of anger toward myself, I had to apologize to those I knew I’d hurt. Let go. And then move on with the person I knew I was meant to be. There were some scary things that I had to ’fess up to, but recognizing those imperfections helped me realize that I am just like everyone else.

I’m not an expert on forgiveness by any means. This process is still something that I have to practice. But for me, once I made a decision to work through the things that have happened in the past, I have been able to accept others for who they are.

Forgiveness has been less about condoning unhealthy relationships, but letting go and moving forward with what is instead of holding onto unrealistic expectations of what will never be.

Because of this, I have let my guard down. I have gone from trusting no one to seeing the good in everyone. And while no relationship is ever perfect, I have been blessed with meaningful ones.

It’s all because I stopped believing that I was being hurt all of the time. It’s all because I stopped living with self-pity. And through that, I am able to respond to difficult situations with kindness and compassion.

I can forgive because I have been forgiven. I can believe in someone because someone else believed there is good in me. I can extend grace even when it hasn’t been asked for. We’re all human. We all make hurtful mistakes. Even knowing that my feelings may get hurt in the process, I believe it is good practice to live with an open heart.