The Heart is A Gift

I’m just thinking out loud here.  I can’t really wrap my mind around where I’m going with this.  But it starts here:

The heart is a gift.

To give one’s heart is to jump in with both feet,

to stop weighing the cost.

It is to be sure even in the uncertainty.

It is to say out loud what doesn’t always have a voice.

It’s to take off the emergency brake,

to let the cards fall,

to hold hands and run, hard and fast,

together in the same direction.

Protect your heart, we say to those in young love.

It’s a lot to give.

But it’s also a lot to receive.

To receive is to catch with both hands,

to listen with your eyes,

to know the intimacy born of vulnerability.

The heart is a gift.

It is a gift to give; it is a gift to receive.

Once I begin to give my heart,

there’s a severance if I stop giving.

To stop saying yes, to step more carefully and cautiously,

to have a Plan B (even if you don’t know what it is),

to withhold trust –

all of this is to withhold the gift.

I think this is why a breakup is so brutally painful, because you are no longer the honored recipient of that person’s heart.  Even though you know their facts and details, you know their favorites and their preferences, you don’t know their heart anymore.  They’ve put it away, and it’s not yours anymore.

I’m in a place of rebuilding with some people in my life.  I didn’t go anywhere, I didn’t change the definition of our friendship, but in fear, I gently put my heart away.

Sometimes that’s wise.

Sometime that’s dangerous.

Either way, it always points to the beginning of an end.

Vulnerability is trust is intimacy is love.

In the giving, in the showing,

in the receiving, in the knowing,

the heart is a gift.