My Whole Heart, and Yours

... How is your whole heart doing?

In the end – meaning the last moment – it was Tom’s heart that finally surrendered.

Photo by Khadeeja Yasser on Unsplash

Sometimes people talk about a heart "giving out" or "failing" but I don’t think that’s what happened. I think he knew he was dying, that his whole physical body was ready, that "fighting" made no sense. I think he knew it was "letting go" time. His body had served him well, carried him to fascinating places and connected him with great love for countless people. Tom’s body was beautiful and I don’t mean that metaphorically. He’d been given an exquisite body and he took good care of it; he was strong, he was fit, his muscles long and lean. He could run forever, play tennis all day, hike for miles. 

His heart had done it’s good work, physiologically and relationally. Tom and his heart, together, gave all they had until the very end. Completely. Whole-heartedly. That’s how he lived.

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best who loveth best
All things, both great and small:
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

~ from Samuel T. Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Consider for a moment the magic and mystery of the human heart: its architecture, its brilliant physiology and biology, those four chambers, the valves that open and close, the electrical system, this fist-sized pump that does the constant essential work of moving our blood throughout our bodies. 

Squeeze a tennis ball, hard. That’s what your heart does: 100,000 times every day; nearly 40 million times a year; 2.5 billion times in a 70-year lifetime. 

And most of us, most of the time don’t even think about it.

So I’m inviting us to take a minute to think about it.

It’s a miracle of design, this little package of electricity and muscle.

Here’s a very unsophisticated summary of what’s going on inside of you right now:

An electrical impulse causes those two chambers on the right side of the heart to pump blood to the lungs where carbon dioxide (a byproduct of metabolism) is offloaded, and a fresh supply of oxygen (necessary for life) is gathered. Then that fresh oxygen-rich blood coming back from the lungs goes over to a chamber on the left side of the heart where it gets pushed out to the entire body via the aorta. This happens non-stop. Until it stops.

This heart of yours is a miracle. As is the entire body: a miracle and a mystery, "fearfully and wonderfully made."  Maybe medical science has demystified vast aspects of the human body, but there’s still so much more beyond our comprehension.

This four chambered muscle, this grand central station for our 60,000 miles of blood vessels, sends oxygen and nutrients to our brains, our bellies, our entire being. 

And it does all of that to support all of this: the even more mysterious and miraculous reality of being alive in the world. Living. Learning. Loving.

And the metaphor. Ah, the beautiful metaphor…

I’m thinking today of the muscle and miracle of our emotional, relational, spiritual heart - also multi-chambered, also essential and life-giving - and infinitely more miraculous and mysterious.

What do we hold in these chambers of our hearts? What are the energies that surge and pulse, enlivening our days and nights, moving us to laughter or tears or rage or tender passion? 

What do we take in? What do we push out? How do we keep going when life overwhelms us? Or - harder, sometimes - when it underwhelms us?

What secret treasures do we keep hidden? What shining lights do we protect or reveal?

What crippling traumas or impossible dreams reside here, and how much space do we give them? 

What winsome wisdom waits to speak to us, in us, for us?

Listen. Listen to this wondrous work of the heart.

We know this: the heart can hold more love than we can possibly imagine; its capacity is infinite.

We know this: the heart can break, and break, and break again.  

We know this: the heart knows more than our minds can articulate.

We know this: the heart longs for connection and community.

It holds magic and mystery, beauty and brokenness, hope and ache, desire and fire. The heart holds Life. 

She spoke of the great powers of courage and love and forgiveness. “You can choose how you think,” she said, “and you can choose how you speak, and how you treat people. All of us have a good heart, and all of us have an evil heart, and you must choose which heart you will feed.”

“If you feed your good heart with love and forgiveness, with song and laughter, with suffering and hope,” she said, “it will be enough, and will grow larger and stronger than your evil heart, and it will stay peaceful within you.”

~ from Trouble the Water, R. Bruff

Dear one, how are you feeding your heart?

(*these are hard questions, maybe without clear answers, but oh I hope you’ll ponder them.)

How are you cultivating this powerhouse of life called you?

How are you making space for the goodness, the grief, the passion, the possibilities, the enormous and powerful and tender and delicate gifts of life and love?

What treasures of your heart will you share, and what wounds will you guard?

What dreams will you feed?

Who will you welcome and who will you love and where will the boundaries be and how will you know?

How will we – each of us, all of us – keep growing our hearts, our capacity to love more?

How will we give our whole-hearted selves to this world so thirsty for fierce and fabulous love?

Early in Tom’s illness, a brave friend looked me in the eyes and took my hands in hers and urged me to love him with “spectacular love.” To give all I could give, to hold nothing back, to pour it out. Completely. Courageously. Whole-heartedly.

It sounds romantic and beautiful. And it was and is, but not in that Hallmark movie way. (And to be clear: sweet tender movies are my thing. This was not that.)

It was tough. Messy. Maddening. Exhausting. And an incredible privilege. Tom had shown me how to live and how to love whole-heartedly, spectacularly.

I don’t pretend to understand this spectacular miracle. But I do know this: the more love we give, the more love we are capable of giving.

Dear one, your heart is beautiful, like you. Feed it well, listen to it carefully, guard it fiercely, open it courageously, share it wisely, and love it - love yourself - generously. Our world needs you and your whole glorious heart.

You are loved, whole-heartedly.