A Heart Paused

Dear John,

Dear A Heart Paused,

Author Brene Brown (brilliant writer, I hope you’ve read Daring Greatly) is quite vocal in her dislike of the phrase bless your heart. Now I’m from the South, very familiar with the phrase, and I get her point, that that phrase can be said from a safe, condescending distance dripping with saccharine-sweetness laced with no real interest in what’s going on in your life. I get it, and I’ve been both the giver and the receiver of such horribleness. But I also buck against that a little because I believe those three words, if spoken at our best, or even in our hope for the best, hold immense power, for they say that deepest part of you, the part that holds everything together, that place where hopes and dreams are born? With what power I have I extend a blessing to that place because its hurting or sad or grasping to find its way, and that makes the similar place within me, my heart, feel so very tender toward you.

When I read your note that’s the first thing I wanted to say to you: Bless your heart.

The second thing I wanted to say, and did say, is that’s a doozy of a Dear John. On the one hand its laughable to think an aging dinosaur male would have anything of worth to say to such a heartfelt plea. But on the other hand to not say something would be to fall into the very kind of bless your heart nonsense Brene Brown hates, as do I. So here you go, I offer you what I have, which is my story. And yes, I know there are so many variations to the love-marriage-commitment picture these days, to even speak of marriage in some circles elicits that look a calf gives to a new gate – what’s that? So I trust you can take these words and apply them to your own story.

I’m sure C.S. Lewis or some other dead white guy said something much more eloquent concerning this, but back in 2013, on the occasion of my 23rd wedding anniversary, I wrote these words:

Marriage is the doorway to the second half

of the world, one long learning of what you can’t

do for another person, a shared wrap of yesterdays

woven with small expressions of disappointment yet

each one dyed deep by the hitchhiker’s joy that

someone on the great lonely road stopped to say

Hey, why don’t you and I go together?

 

You wrote of your pause, which is tied to your desire to never, ever hurt this young, courageous shy guy several states away offering you his heart. I so strongly understand this desire, and its so beautiful to hear you speak it. But please let me say the not hurting him part? that’s impossible. Were you to take this young man’s heart, however that might look, you would hurt him. And were you to give your heart to him, he would hurt you too. This is inevitable because, well, you’ve both got each other’s hearts in your hands and while there would hopefully be a wagonload of days in which you would truly bless the hearts of one another, there would also be days in which one or the other or both of you at the same time would curse the other’s heart. I don’t believe we ever go into love with that intent, but it happens along the way.

one long learning of what you can’t

do for another person, a shared wrap of yesterdays

woven with small expressions of disappointment

 

 

So the safest thing would be to withhold your heart from him or whoever else might offer you their heart. But in doing so I believe, and this is simply my opinion, you’re cursing your own heart, you’re limiting what your heart could possibly become by, as some of us used to sing, hiding it under a bushel. Does that mean you couldn’t be happy and discover a cure for cancer and travel the world and carve Russian nesting dolls and support a passel of kids overseas? Nope, it doesn’t mean that at all. But in all that discovering and traveling and supporting I believe there would be a portion of your heart that would be safe but stunted. You wouldn’t be whole-hearted, a condition that can only exist if you’re open to both the hurt and the joy. I wish I could tell you differently, but to do so would be a lie.

yet

each one dyed deep by the hitchhiker’s joy that

someone on the great lonely road stopped to say

Hey, why don’t you and I go together?

 

Yet (I adore that word for its hopefulness) if you’re willing to forgive and be forgiven, I believe its possible for two people to experience something along life’s often lonely road that can only be described as joy. Some of the conversation I’m privy to these days sounds like getting your life together, discovering who you are, building your career, etc., then, when all that’s in place, opening your heart to this thing called love. Does that work? Yep, it sure can, and sometimes in a fascinating way. But there’s also offering and opening your heart to love on the front end of all that and getting your life together together, discovering who you are together, building your career together, etc. Yes, you can do all that together and things can still unravel and fall apart on you. But there’s no way to know unless you try.

And again, while that’s not the only way, since you asked me I’m going to say its quite satisfying, because you’re building this shared history where one day, say in your 24th year of marriage (where I currently find myself), you can, for example, hang ornaments on a Christmas tree with this other person that you’ve given your heart to and some of the ornaments will remind you of absolutely curs-ed seasons that you’d rather not recall but you do because they’re a part of your story, and then there are other ornaments that you hang and when you do your eyes meet and things get misty because you’re reminded of the birth of children or a magical trip to Big Sur or a time in your shared lives when you lived in the braggy state of Texas or how an old rich lady blessed your very young hearts one year by hiring a lovely lady to come once a week and give you a little break from laundry and babies so the two of you could go get a hamburger and a milkshake. I know that all sounds old-timey, almost quaint. All I know is its the truth. 

Life is so short, my young friend. Be careful, but don’t stay on pause too long. Thank you for sharing a little of your heart. I hope the little of mine I’ve shared here helps in some way, that it might bless that similar place in your life that has so much ahead of it, so very much.

Sincerely,

John

p.s. – I love the way you described that guy states away…