“To Love is to be Vulnerable”

I remember sitting in my dorm room, mad at God, because he called me to the vocation of marriage and here I was (a sophomore in college) not having met my husband. (I was CLEARLY past the age of hope to find love… *please note the sarcasm*).

Sarcasm aside, I had my fair share of heartache, tears, mistakes, wounds, and loneliness. I remember writing in my journal about my heart and telling God I wanted to give him my heart. Don’t be fooled, though. This was not the kind of “give God your heart” that he actually asks for. You know… to love him, to serve him, to pray to him, to rely on him, to trust in him, the list goes on. Honestly, maybe I thought it was at the time. I thought I was doing something selfless and perhaps romantically heroic by giving God my heart. But, I found that journal entry a while ago. I read it. And I felt sorry for the young college girl who wrote it.

As I read through it, it didn’t seem like a genuine “giving” of one’s heart. It read as if I was throwing my heart at God… almost in a way to say, “Here! You take it! I don’t want it anymore!” Like all the hurt and loneliness left me utterly hopeless that God would ever answer my prayers. So, I decided to throw it away… lock it away “for God” (*insert air quotes*). In this heartbreaking journal entry, I saw the truth of the two years that followed. As I read, I could visibly see the wall that I erected around my heart. For the next two years I refused to date or to let anyone remotely get to know me. I became undeniably independent. The only person who truly knew me was God.

In this entry, I wrote, “My heart is locked away in a box buried underground in an abandoned cave.” I guess this was my version of “giving my heart” to God…??? I remember reading a passage from CS Lewis that changed everything, though. It shocked my heart back to life… or I should say God did. The passage said:

To love at all is to be vulnerable… Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it up carefully… wrap it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable… To love is to be vulnerable.

I believe this excerpt was placed in front of me by God. I had done exactly this. I wanted to keep my heart safe so I locked it away. I loved the image of a coffin… because that’s what it was. I was allowing my heart to grow impenetrable, which, according to CS Lewis, meant irredeemable.

Last summer a group of Project Timothy missionaries and I led a girl’s retreat. We led the ladies in a reflection on the Sacred Heart of Jesus and then invited them to imagine their own hearts. What are the beauties; the wounds; the ways God has transformed them? We then all took to our artistic abilities and painted or drew our imagined hearts. I wanted to share all of this because the above-mentioned time in my life was the heart that I pictured and felt compelled to draw.

I had locked my heart away. I cut off its air and let it blacken. I let the lies the devil told me about myself—that I was ugly, damaged, used, dark, broken, wounded—take hold of this dying heart. But, Christ, showing me his own wounds, unlocked this hardened heart and brought to me a new one. He brought a child’s heart. “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 18:3). This bright pink heart held nothing except the truth about who I was as his daughter; beloved, pure, cherished, born again. My name, Kara Renee, actually means exactly this! This heart, so simple and small, was given to me to nourish and let grow into a heart that desired so deeply the love of God! To trust as a child trusts.

We all hold on to wounds. Perhaps many of us retract into those wounds and lies and let them control how we interact with the world, with others, or worse… our relationship with God. But I wanted to share this because God is the transforming power. Christ carries our wounds, he speaks truth into the lies we allow ourselves to believe, and he renews us in all things! I want to encourage anyone struggling with wounds, God’s call in their vocation, loneliness, trust, love, or much more to turn those things over to God. Trust that through him, even in the midst of hurt, we are being healed.