Unbridled

The overarching theme of my life as of late has been silence. My need for it, my ignorance in it, my reluctance to pursue it. As I was hiking on Saturday, I was praying, thinking and generally being very noisy in my own head. I stopped and sat on the shoreline for a moment, listening to the waves hit the rocks, and I wondered: Why am I still talking? I had been hiking for 4 miles or so, and I hadn't stopped talking the whole time. I kept praying, asking God for answers, but I never gave him the chance to speak. Silly me.

I opened my bible and read the beatitudes, and one in particular caught my attention: Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. As I said last week, I have recently come to understand what forgiveness really means. However, letting go of that burden made room in my heart for all the emotion I had never felt before. All that sadness that I didn't have room to feel before suddenly had copious amounts of space to exist. It rather caught me by surprise.

Blessed are those who mourn. God does not create sadness, but he does give us the capacity to feel it. God created us in his image, and he is a God who feels. He weeps, he shouts with joy, he is blinded by anger. Can I honestly say I have ever felt emotions this intensely? Not even close. And my bet would be that neither have you.

Because life tells us to rein them in. It's okay to be sad, but not for too long or too obnoxiously. It's okay to be happy, but don't bother anyone with it. It's alright to be angry, but just don't unnerve anyone. Do only what is comfortable, what is expected. But God gave us the capacity to feel as he feels. To love as he loves. To hurt as he hurts.

It is in those moments of complete silence that we realize how short we fall. We know that we are not who we should be. We realize how much our heads distort our hearts. I dramatize, minimize, analyze and explain away every single emotion that I have. Why? I am manipulating, ruining, one of God's greatest gifts.

It is the heart that makes us human. It is our heart that makes us God's. It gives us the ability to love, to hurt, to be angry for ourselves and others. Why do I insist on placing this most precious of gifts into my neat little box? The kind of heart that is fueled by God is unpredictable, wild, and untamed.

God does not tame our hearts, he sets them free.

I spent the rest of the afternoon removing my head from my heart. I let my heart just be what it is, instead of trying to force it to be what I wanted. I embraced the joy, anger, confusion and sadness. Pure and unbridled. Wild at heart.

I felt.

God is so good.