OPEN YOUR HEART

Sorry for that last post, but just like life itself, this blog can't be all sunshine and roses. In this post I'd like to speak to those of you who are like I used to be not so long ago. As many of you know the first 16 years of my life we're wonderful and happy. But from that moment to about the time I turned 37 I would say I lived life with what you would call a closed heart. I was not the open book that I am now. I was kind, friendly, but I couldn't let anyone completely in my heart, not even my husband. Yes I saved myself from a great deal of pain, but I also deprived myself of great joy as well.

So for those of you who go through life with thick walls around your heart, please do what you can to lower those walls, or prepare yourself for a very lonely life. Who am I to talk about walls around a heart? What do I know about such things? Well believe me, you're looking at someone who didn't just have walls around her heart, we're talking forts! I was a sort of Pollyanna to everyone. Always there for people always tried to help where I could, but when it came to my own problems or difficulties in life I pushed everyone away, and thought I could handle it all on my own. I always had that "I don't want people to know about my health problems." Or that "I don't want to talk about it" attitude. I've even been criticized by some of my friends about this blog and about writing my feelings down.

The truth is that I was calm and cool on the outside, and screaming on the inside. If you go around like that, you will explode at some point, and chances are it will be over something small, and you'll end up making a fool of yourself. It took me years to learn that by opening up, and letting people see my vulnerable side, I not only help myself, but others as well. Sometime last year I was very down and wrote a very sad and depressing post. At first I thought gee, maybe that wasn't such a good idea to expose my feelings like that, then I received an email form a friend of mine who receives these posts to her email, and she had forward it to her brother who was suffering from severe depression, and after reading it, he went for help. So please, it doesn't matter who you are, or what you're going through, open up and let those around you in. It won't be easy, believe me I know it won't, but it will be worth it I promise you.

Now if you want to see a great example of opening up to love and life, there is a wonderful movie called Shadowlands. This movie sort of changed my life so to speak. It's the true story about the later years of author C. S. Lewis. Click Here to watch it in parts on YouTube. It's about a man in his 50's who after his mom's death when he was a child, spent the rest of his life with a closed heart. He even had the nerve to lecture about faith, God,and love, for which he knew nothing about. Then he meets this divorced mom and she sees right through him, and changes his life. He falls in love for the first time in his life, only to loose her to cancer in the end. But between the time he falls in love with her and marries her even though he knows she's dieing, up until her death, he experiences a joy and happiness that he has never known. And at the very end he asks the question "Why love, if loosing hurts so much?" he then answers himself with "The pain now, was part of the happiness then....That's the deal." You can choose safety, or you can choose pain. But I think I'd rather take the risk of pain to be able to feel the joy.....even if it's just for a little while. That's the deal!