dear soft heart

Having a soft heart.

It's the cause of many feelings I'm not sure I want to feel.

It's why I ached all over my body when a little girl came to me and wept into my lap on Mothersday because she doesn't know her real mom.

It's the reason I flinched and felt a little sick when I saw the dead dog by the side of the road.

It's why I can't read the newspaper without falling to pieces inside.

Also, having a soft heart is why I hide it sometimes, I guess.

Because baby, don't you know. Soft hearts cost you so much. They will shatter you before they shatter themselves.  They will make you want to rip out your heart and throw it away, the bloody mess it is. The bloody mess it makes you.

They say having a soft heart in a cruel world is courage, not weakness. And I agree.

Because it is sucking away at every ounce of courage I have in me, it's teaching me the meaning of bravery in a whole new light.

I'd say that it's both a blessing and a curse. And I'd also say, that having a soft heart is pretty much a necessity if you're going down the Jesus road.

You don't get to choose. A hard heart, however convenient it might sometimes be, is impossible to have if you're following a Saviour who got beaten to a pulp, had a crown of thorns harshly put onto His head, and then died, to save a human race that denies Him every single day. That, after what He's done, still turn their back on Him daily.

And baby, it's so hard, I know.
But Jesus, see, He loves soft hearts. He uses them to take out the rocks in other people's hard hearts.

Soft hearts are excruciatingly painful things to have.

But in the end, only soft can heal the hard.