Heart

I was thinking about hearts today. A few months ago I did a fairly in depth scripture study about the heart and found quite a few intriguing references on the subject. The heart has a plethora of uses not considered or outlined by typical anatomy books. The heart is referred to as seeing, hearing, feeling, exercising, aching, breaking, weeping...how did the heart accumulate so many uses and abilities? Last night I was impressed by the heart's ability to hurt.

The first time I remember the internal aching that stemmed from saddness was after a childhood friend committed suicide in ninth grade. I remember walking to school after the funeral--looking at my feet cross the lawn, damp from morning dew--and asking my cousin in a quivering voice why my heart hurt. I couldn't understand how this vital organ was so closely connected with my emotions. She had no answer for me, and I still don't understand it. But I vividly remember the pain that was so tangeble and real to me then. As a fourteen-year-old coping with the passing of a friend, I could feel the fibers of my heart contorting to parallel my muddled mind. It was a feeling as real as pricking my finger, but the hurt went deeper.

As I got in my car last night, I once again felt the feeling of a pain, a weight in my chest, as if my once living, pumping heart had turned to marble and was putting undue stress on the vessels and arteries connected to it. I should have laid down to help the pulling at my heart strings. I did not cry, nor was I inclined to do so. I just sat there and felt my heart, sad, but relieved. I again was struck with wonder. How are you feeling with me? How do you provide me with the vital stuff of life, and then hang there and sulk? How are you, my heart, almost like a separate entity in my chest, beating along with my spirit, keeping me in step with the rest of the world, and still lying close to my emotions and helping me understand it all?

Hearts are so confusing. It's hard for me to sort out feelings which all seem to be stored (whether metaphorically or literally, I haven't yet determined) in my heart. I wish I could take it out and piece together the confused parts and put them back in some orderly, seemingly understandable fashion. I wrote a song once that I never finished. It was while I was having some of these same feelings of wanting to take a closer look at my heart and my feelings and sort out the confusion. It was written almost a year ago to date:

How does one capture a feeling
And bottle it for later use
Study it and see if it is all there or not

And how do you examine that feeling
You see my lenses they don’t work
I need a microscope that can view my heart

How can I say I love you?
Do you expect me to?
How can you say you love me?
I’m only seventeen

Is this just an over reaction
One that I will look back on
And see how I made a fool of myself

Or there really truth to this feeling
The one that I just can’t pin down
I want to crack my heart open and pull it out

So then I could really see
What you mean to me
It isn’t black and white
What if it isn’t right

So what to do now? Where do I turn?
There’s only one that I know of where to look
Don’t follow me, I shouldn’t be on your mind
Just turn and see, the truth

How can I say I love you?
Do you really expect me to?
How can you say you love me?
Did you forget I’m just seventeen

How can’t I say I love you?
How do I find the truth
Of how I really feel?
I want to see if it’s real

So what to do now? Where do I turn?
There’s only one that I know of where to look
Don’t follow me, don’t you see
I shouldn’t be on your mind it just isn’t right
Not now