Dear Heart

Well hey there.  I haven’t shared any of my recent thoughts with you so here I am typing away. It’s that time of night again…or should I say morning? It’s 12:55 a.m. and of course in my mind that means it’s prime life evaluation time. Greaaaaaat. I feel it’s at this time of night/morning I do the most thinking but I come to the worst conclusions. I’ll let you step into the mind of Jenny Joffer for a moment.

Thought 1: I have so much to do by the end of the semester; it’s impossible. There is not enough time in the day to accomplish everything. (I proceed to go into syllabus shock.)

Conclusion 1: I am going to fail out of school which means I’ll never become a Child Life Specialist which means I failed which means I’m a failure which means I’ll never succeed at anything in life.

Thought 2: I don’t have a boyfriend because… and here I would create a list of every possible thing you could rag on yourself for.  (I’ve come to realize I’m not very nice to myself. I need to work on that. You probably need to work on that too.)

Conclusion 2: I am going to die alone.

As you can see, this type of thinking isn’t productive. I fall into these lies of the enemy that try to convince me that I am worthless and everything in my life is hopeless. Satan eats away at my insecurities and stokes the fires of my deepest hurts.  I know. What a douche. All the while, we live in a culture telling us to listen to our heart because it knows us best. There’s that songs that’s all like,  “Listen to your hearttttt, when he’s calling for youuuu….” You know what? No Roxette (singer of the song). No, I will not listen to my heart because my heart is a friggen’ idiot. Not the physical heart because that keeps me alive and therefore it is great, but the emotional heart. Let me hit you with a little scripture.

"The heart is decietful about all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" Jeremiah 17:9

Yeah. Boomtown. Population: The Bible. My heart doesn’t know what’s best for me. My heart deceives me. My heart clings to things like a friendship, an accomplishment, or a boy to make me feel worth. Then when I am let down or disappointed by that thing or that person I feel so empty and worthless. I set this unreachable standard that would be crazy for anyone or anything to meet but my heart tries to convince me it’s logical. Heart, I think it’s time you take the backseat and buckle yourself in for a little G-O-D. This world is a beautiful place. It has beautiful people and moments for me to experience but it isn’t the ultimate beauty I have in this life. God is. I like to think of it this way: so I really love this person and this person makes me happy. They are kind and wonderful and they make my dopamine levels go all silly. Like just a ridiculous amount of love going on and I basically think they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. Then I get this thought that this person that I love is just a reflection of the God who created them. So it’s like for as amazing as I think this person is, God is unfathomably more amazing than they could ever hope to be and the love I feel for them is only a fraction of the love God feels for me. Woah. I’m not saying I’m perfect and I’m not saying I won’t have a Taylor Swift sound-tracked pity party every now and then but at the end of the day I know that I have to look to God for everything and not my heart.  I have a hope that anchors my soul.

“We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf…” Hebrews 6:19-20

And that hope is God. Amen.