Heart Change

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I walk around my house with my hand over my heart. How is it that You have changed my very heart?

Not my circumstances.

I wept alone in the kitchen yesterday for the hurts that hurt so deeply, the piercing wounds caused by too many days saying too many unkind things. I felt reduced. Reduced to a lonely child with her head on her knees in a corner, crying for someone to love her. Someone to nurture her. Someone to lift up her head and say “I’m here for you, always.”

Many years of marriage sometimes reduces us to children.

And I just let God have it right there in the kitchen as I chopped up onions and carrots and bell pepper and celery and potato, huge wet glops of tears falling on the kitchen floor when I scooped to pick up a stray vegetable peeling, as I angrily scrubbed pots and dishes in the hot soapy sink, hot wet ugly tears, the sleeve of my t-shirt drenched with snot: I got honest, I got down and dirty with God with all the hurt, all the rage, all the pain, the weariness, the why.

And God took it.

And God did a new thing.

Today I shared with a friend how I need to work on saying out loud the things of my heart to my husband. This is not an easy thing to do.

Driving in the car, my singing songs turned to impassioned prayers for my husband: that he would get back to his first love again, that he would know Jesus’ love for him, that he would have joy and wholeness… not for me. Not because I want my marriage to be easier. Not because I want my life to be easier. But for him.

Right then and there God did a heart-change in me. If you knew my heart like I know my heart, you too would marvel at the miracle of this.

Suddenly I saw the shoes in a tumble on the floor, the crumpled-up socks, and I was grateful for them. I saw with eyes wide open the wonderful mess of our home together, and I praised Him for it all, this messy, messy hard life together.  I had found the important thing. Through all the layers and layers and layers of potato chip crumbs and all the mumbled grumblings and loud, heart-piercing grumblings turned to shouts and doors slamming, so much daily unhappiness and nothing ever changing and nothing. Ever. Changing…

I had found the important thing.

Something needed to change and what needed to change was me. 

I walk around my house now with my hand over my heart, because that’s where God resides. And where God resides, He moves. He changes. He cleans. He burns. He makes holy. He makes His.

I am His. This is His.

Now, to burn with passion to pray and to pray and to not give up, ever. To trust God with the very things that scare us. To look at the imperfect things, the downright rotten things, and to see them and give them up to the only One Who can turn them into something beautiful.  To be filled with love the way Jesus loves. To offer a glass of water. A smile. An olive branch. To try again.

And again. And again. 

To keep trying.

My God’s specialty is these kinds of quiet, inner miracles. Miracles of the heart. The miracle of a true heart-change. A heart truly made new because it’s His now. It’s in His hands now. He turns it over and over in His making hands and makes it brand new. If He looks closely, can He see the Son’s face? He keeps working until He does. He is patient.

I place my hand over my heart because I want to really remember this gift. I want to stop, and marvel. I want to remember again that if God changes my heart today, He can do it again. I know I will need it again.

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