The unguarded heart.
If you resonate with the sound of the unguarded heart, it is an indicator that you have one yourself. If you’re someone who doesn’t know what that means, that’s okay, we’ll explore this special group of people together to enhance your understanding. My hope is that this will build a level of compassion for those in your life who do have this gift.
Yes, it’s a gift. Oftentimes, a curse, because of the fallen world we humans live in; carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders. But in overall design, having a heart with no gate around it is a gift. How do I know so?
Well… I am someone who has battled with this gift and curse for 25 years now.
At first, I thought I was just a weak person compared to everyone else. Fragile. Oversensitive. An overthinker. Since these are the words that have been spoken over me as a child and a teenager, I naturally thought something was wrong with me. Why can’t I be stronger? I just wasn’t tough enough to toughen up, to allow little words of hurt to deflect off of me and cause me no emotion. No. They stuck to me. They stuck to me hard. I felt words and emotions from others deeply and never really learned what to do with that load. I describe it as a magnet. Each word of hurt stuck to me and formed my schema, essentially the belief system of “Kelly Foley”. So you can imagine, my self-esteem was pretty low. You can imagine, I took on false information about who I was and what I was capable of. You can imagine, in not knowing how to navigate around the unguardedness, I felt smaller and smaller in this ocean pool of people with hearts that are securely guarded. I always envied their strength. But, come to find out, I realize it’s not a matter of strength versus weakness. What a relief, right? It’s a matter of gifting. You either have this gift or you don’t. And if you don’t, I guarantee your gift is in something else just as beautiful.
To a degree, open-hearted people feel like they’re outsiders to the world. They’ve never been totally accepted by our culture, maybe even their own family. Why is it that society praises those who are tough and condemns those who feel? Think about it, think of a person in your life who you may claim as “fragile” or “weak” or “different” or “emotional”. Meditate on that person for a second. Who do you think they really are? Are they someone who has a gift that the world has squashed? Do they qualify as someone who upholds an unguarded heart? Are they hard to talk to because of it? Why do you think that is? What do you like about them? Do you think this has to do with their open-heartedness?
My point is, people like myself and others, who feel things deeply, who unguard their hearts for the benefit of empathizing with others, who come across as “weak”, should accept themselves more for who they are. Sure, we can work on letting little things go. I know that’s my biggest ask right now for the sake of my own relationships… let the simple unnecessary things poof away and not allow them to affect me. Because if you’re anything like myself, who holds onto little things that don’t deserve time, a lack of forgiveness can creep in, a seed of resentment… and we all know how that usually ends. Not well. That’s not what I want and that’s not what I want for you. So you and I can work on this together. But I do want to emphasize one more thing.
The magnetic heart can let really wonderful things in as well. Yes, they suck in all the bad, but they also suck in all the good too. When I feel joy, that joy is amplified times one thousand. Sometimes it feels like I’m running around this world as if I got off the best rollercoaster drop of a lifetime at Six Flags Amusement Park. What a reward we attain when we come out of the lows, right? Could this be why my happiness scale functions as an extreme rollercoaster? Really up, up. Then really down, down.
Does this resonate with anyone? I hope so because context is everything. Context helps us become more uncomfortable in our own skin. Therefore, that allows us more stability in our ever-so-evolving environment. Sure, it’s an exhausting process, but just remember, your unguardedness is nothing you’ve done wrong, it’s nothing to be ashamed of even if society tells us to be ashamed of it. It’s strictly a God-designed gift that was given to you, given to us. It’s just now up to you and me to accept this gift, to love this gift, and to discern when the best time is to use it and when to let it rest. Oh. And how to forgive. Because not everyone understands us… and they can’t help that. So forgiveness is key. For them. For us.
XOXO,
Kelly.