on hardheartedness

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock 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.

-C.S. Lewis

I got online today with a blog post in mind: hardheartedness.  Imagine my shock when I saw a draft with that title already started...in October.  Apparently, this is a lingering condition. 

I am naturally a very tenderhearted person.  It makes me weak or emotional in some ways but I've always counted it among my better qualities on the whole.   I cry with strangers in airports, I ache for lonely people I pass on the street, I long for everyone to feel loved and known and appreciated and I desire to hear God's voice and walk with Him and sense His leading.

But lately, or perhaps not so lately, I've noticed a certain hardness in me and I don't like it.  Oh, I might call it by a different name - I'm just crabby or irritable or tired or overwhelmed - or I might chalk it up to a momentary or situational indifference or apathy, but at the heart (pun intended) there is something deeper...darker...harder.

I'm not sure where its coming from either.  Loneliness.  Frustration.  The day-in-day-out of routine and stress and bills and to-do lists.  The neverending cycle of alarms going off and exhausted crawling into bed at night feeling like there's so little to show for the day...for my life.  Worldliness.  Sin.  Disobedience.  Maybe it's just sadness.  I'm homesick for my family.  The holidays are over.  Working full-time now so every day for the next 40 years looks scarily similar.  Rejection.  Hopelessness.  The loss of loved ones.  So many little things (how can these pants not fit and where did those forehead lines come from and I really spent that much last month) and so many big things (will I spend my whole life alone and will anyone ever really know me and still love me and is anything I do in life really going to matter) that somehow attach to me until I feel like I'm encased in concrete.  I feel like I'm stuck out in a dust storm...dirty, gritty, dry, brittle, rough...hard.

It is evident in the many things that frustrate me now, in the kindness I'm unwilling to show, the way I shut people out and avoid doing the things that would require feeling, the way I pick and push and nag to start an argument, the way I make excuses and complain and whine, the way I justify my rudeness and antisocial behavior, the way I read an insult or offense into every encounter, the petty annoyance at the perceived flaws of those around me, the way I shut the world out to lose myelf in a movie or tv show, insensitivity to truth or insights that used to fire me up, a lack of desire for spiritual things, a pessimistic outlook and constant assuming the worst, the list goes on and on...

And today, in this moment, I don't know how to fix it. 

I am a self-improvement junkie.  I like to see a problem and find a solution.  I like a checklist, a plan, a to-do list, softening your heart in 3 easy steps.  I like the closing statement and the wrap-up summary.  I literally googled "how to cure a hard heart" this morning with pen and paper in hand to get this little issue handled and get on with my day.  But the thing is, my heart didn't get hard overnight.  I can't expect that an online how-to or wiki-article to soften it in an instant.  I don't know what  to do.  But I know where to begin.  Lord, help me. 

Perhaps recognizing it and being grieved about it and wanting to change it is a good start.  And ultimately, I know it can be changed:

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. Ezekiel 36:26

Today's Jesus Calling chips away a little more: 

Softly I announce My presence.  Shimmering hues of radiance tap gently at your consciousness, seeking entrance.  Though I have all Power in heaven and earth, I am infinitely tender with you.  The weaker you are, the more gently I approach you.  Let your weakness be a door to My Presence.  Whenever you feel inadequate, remember that I am your everpresent Help.  Hope in Me, and you will be protected from depression and self-pity.  Hope in Me, and you will be protected from depression and self-pity.  Hope is like a golden cord connecting you to heaven.  The more you cling to this cord, the more I bear the weight of your burdens; thus, you are lightened.  Heaviness is not of My kingdom.  Cling to hope, and My rays of Light will reach you through darkness.

I don't have any clarity or answers yet, and I still feel the weight of a cold, hard heart...but I know that I'm not alone.  I know it is not permanent.  I know I want to keep chipping...