Guarding Above All Else

 

Above all else

guard your heart,

for everything you do flows from it.

Proverbs 4:23

More for Lent as we finish up the week.

Still finding myself in those spaces of getting less things done on purpose, and not always loving what I find there.  Gently, because it's of no purpose to inflict shame upon one's own soul.  But honestly, because change only comes from the truth.

Guarding my heart.  These words from Solomon come to mind for some unexpected reason when I move this votive glass aside to grab a book on the shelf.  The glass has been there a long time, but the delicacy of the heart tied in the ribbon catches my attention in a new way just now.  And I hear the verse inside my head.

Why this?  It's my first question.  Why these words at such a small and random provocation?  This happens for me sometimes, no often, and I want to pay attention when it does.  So I open my Bible and sit with it for a while.  In those Lenten spaces.

Because lately, while all this not-doing-so-much-stuff is going on, I've been in touch with more anger than I'd like to admit.  Doesn't matter what about, but it's there, and it's a lot, and that surprises me.  And it distracts me.  It's not who I want to be, yet here we are.   I'm disappointed.  Maybe I thought that in the spaces I'd be opening up to more peace.  But not so much.  

So then I sit with that.  The anger.  I let myself feel it.  Try to trace it backwards to what's underneath.  Gently, because it's of no purpose to thrash about needlessly expending precious energy.  But honestly, because sorting it out only comes from the truth.

And yes, it's true, that everything I do flows from my heart, from that core of who I am, what I love and how I feel and what is cherished.  Everything.  Guarding that, owning that, caring for and nourishing that.  I sit with all of that for a bit longer.  

Then I put the book back, and the votive glass back, and let the delicacy of that dangling heart move ever so slightly in the doing of it.  Not resolved.  That won't come so simply or easily or quickly.  But perhaps it's made less in recognizing it, owning it, validating it.  For now, that will be enough.  It's a process after all.

Maybe this is why Lent lasts forty days.  I need the time.

Oh, and the snow thing is back with us again today.  

Would anyone be glad for it by now?  Not sure.

But at least it's Friday.

Lots going on this weekend, and I will embrace it all.