Do You Have a "Shut Down" Heart?

As those of you who actively follow my blog know, last week I shared a post about the way that we live not-so-loving lives, how we treat others in not-so-loving ways, and how we need to live with “open hearts.” If you haven’t read that post, you’re going to want to go back and read it, because that was just the beginning of everything I have to say about that particular topic. This post is just the first of many that will come after the one I shared last week, so if you read that one first it will give you a little bit of context.

Last week, I shared that I had just finished a book that I loved, and that taught me a lot about what it means to love, but what I didn’t share as much about is that it also taught me a lot about what it means to live alive. That’s something I want to talk about today. In Secrets Over Sweet Tea, Denise Hildreth Jones writes about being alive. Really alive. And ever since I read that book, that’s something I truly want to be, and that something that will help us to really love.

 

 

Think about when you were a kid. Or, if you can’t remember that far back, think about other kids that you know, when they’re still young and innocent and they don’t care about being “normal,” but instead say and do whatever they feel like saying or doing. Then think about yourself at your silliest, when you’re comfortable with yourself and you don’t care if anyone sees you acting like a nut. Aren’t those the best times? You can’t keep from smiling and just enjoying yourself when you allow yourself to be truly you. Am I right? And that’s something that little kids get all the time. Before they grow up and become insecure, and unsure of themselves and who they are, they’re just truly themselves. They don’t pretend to be anything but what they are (except when playing pretend of course), they cry when they’re sad, the yell when they’re mad, the feel whatever it is they feel without fear that it will “offend” anyone.

When does that change? When do we stop being truly ourselves? Now, I’m not saying that we can just say and be whatever we want to be and it doesn’t matter if we hurt other people’s feelings along the way, as you will know from my post last week that is DEFINITELY not the case. What I am saying is that we need to know we don’t have to shut ourselves and our feelings and who we really are down just so that we will be “normal” or “like everyone else” or “grown-up,” or to keep from being “too opinionated” or to keep from causing a fight. If we aren’t comfortable with something, why can’t we say so? If someone has hurt our feelings, why can’t we tell them so? Since when does growing up mean that we have to pretend like we don’t have real emotions and feelings and opinions about things?

Every time you refuse yourself the right to really feel something, you’re shutting yourself down, you’re cutting yourself off from your heart. If you’re happy, be happy. Even if that means dancing around the house in your pajamas with the TV remote as a microphone. Even if that means jumping up and down in excitement over the smallest of things. That’s how you live alive. By being present in the moment, by being your true self, by letting yourself feel.

If we don’t, if we allow ourselves to shut down, we lose ourselves and who we were and become just an empty shell. And empty shells don’t dream. Empty shells don’t feel. Empty shells can’t love. Empty shells just survive. While this can look like so many different things depending on the person, the true result is the same. Eventually, we act out of our brokenness, our “survival mode,” and cause chaos and/or destruction around us. Because when we’re living just to survive, we don’t really think about what we’re doing or how it could affect others, we just want to feel something. We just want a way to remember we’re alive, or to find a way to distract us from our issues so that we don’t have to deal with them. And I don’t know about you, but that is not a way I want to live.

So before I talk about what to do to fix this, to keep from shutting down or to come back alive if you already have, I just want to leave you with time to think about what I’ve said. Do you feel like you’re “shut down”? Is your heart open? Or does anything I’ve said stand out to you, remind you of your own life? Is this how you want to live? Are you? Because in a way, I feel like we all are. And the first way to fix it is to realize there’s something that needs to be fixed in the first place. Take the week, do an evaluation of yourself, of your heart. Where are you “shutting down”? Where are you not letting yourself feel? And on the other hand, where are you the most alive?

Next week, I’ll share more from what I’ve learned in my own life, and more from Secrets Over Sweet Tea, about how to really live alive, and how to love with an open heart.

May God bless you and keep you,

Mackenzie Carol






Some of my inspiration for this post came from Denise Hildreth Jones' Secrets Over Sweet Tea, as well as the actual wording of "shut down" our hearts and living "alive," and I give her full credit for inspiring me to tackle this topic.