All the Hard ThingsSample

Day 3: A HOLE IN MY HEART

Letting God Tend to Our Wounds

August 2019

The doctor breezes into the square taupe examining room, an iPad in his hand. His eyes explore the screen before lifting and finding mine. “Your heart looks good,” he says, nodding. I let go of the breath I didn’t know I was holding.

My heart wasn’t always good. A year prior, I was thrown off guard when I suffered a stroke at age 33. I couldn’t believe it. My shock spiraled further when that stroke led to the discovery that I had a patent foramen ovale: a hole in my heart. Where the chambers meet, they never closed, allowing blood clots to sneak their way out of the chambers and into other places in my body they should not be, like my brain. It was something I was born with; the hole should have closed when I was a baby, but it never did. And while I had surgery to close the hole and have recovered just fine, it still shocks me that I went all my life with it and I didn’t know. I was a college athlete and had run half marathons, and all that time, nothing had happened, yet I had been a ticking bomb waiting to burst.

We are all ticking down our days, waiting with wounds, wondering if we will burst. You may wrestle with your physical health—recovery from surgery that feels endless, an ongoing illness you can’t shake off, lingering pain that doctors don’t have answers for—that leave you in limbo, exhausted and challenged each day to find fresh hope. It can be hard, so hard, to believe things can get better while sitting in the unknown.

How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?
PSALM 13:1-2 (NIV)

You may wrestle with your own struggles—situations that seem to stay stuck, no matter how much praying and thinking about how to best bring about resolutions. That too gets tiring.

Whatever the pain, wherever you are, God wants to fill the holes in our hearts. Mine were literal, but I had the metaphorical ones too. We all do—a hole of not feeling good enough. Of being let down by a trusted friend, a confidence shattered. Of the disappointment of crushed dreams. Of the absence of a parent, either during our forma-tive years or later in life—you name it, the brokenness of life creates rifts in our hearts that we long to have fixed.

Jesus, the lover of our souls, went to the cross to fill the gap for us (1 Peter 2:24). But he first came to earth to experience the weight of emotions that come with living this life, so we would know that he understands exactly what we are experiencing. Yes, we are hurting, recoiling against the pain. But he holds us as we endure the pain, and he loves us too much to just leave us where we are.

There is healing for you. There is healing for me. God wants to close the holes in us and restore us.

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
PSALM 147:3 (NIV)

Our God is close to the brokenhearted—that’s us. But first, we must take our hands off those holes and allow him access.

But when we do invite him into those deep places of our hearts, he takes our wounds and cleans them, rubs gently—though it may sting—and cauterizes them to cure any infection. We are given the best care possible to make a full and satisfying recovery. So our hearts are as good as new. So we may no longer endure surviving but find a way to thrive.

He not only wants to take away that emptiness, but he wants to fill us up with all he offers.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
ROMANS 15:13 (NIV)

God can and will fill us with joy, peace, and hope, so our wholeness can bear witness to our healer God.

There is beautiful healing work to be done in our hearts, once we give God access. His intention is to heal, and he is more than willing to start right now. Open your heart and let him begin to fill what’s long lain empty.

Reflect

Where are the holes in your heart? How have you tried to fill them on your own?

Will you let God access to your pain? Feel free to tell him about your hesitations, and then dare to let him do his work