heart transparency + nyquil = blog

"For a heart is the treasure of any person's life - the heart enables us to love, to know God, to laugh, to play, to have friendships and romance, to feel passion, to fight injustice, to take in beauty, to live. So when the heart is wounded, bound, held captive and dying, everything in life withers. Every relationship - especially our relationship with God. Every work we are called to do. All the glories of life fade away." -John Eldridge

the heart of my loved ones, my friends, my family and my own has been pressing on the forefront of my daily comings and goings for some time now. questions of worth and what moves me into a movement, a tiny blip on the screen of my heart have been penetrating the surface of the doing.

over the past few days i have had one conversation with many people. their heart. there is a stifling mandate that the american culture has brought on, in that we are not allowed to go deeper into another's existence than a surface level. we daily interact with (in some cases) up to hundreds of people daily. we commoditize them. seeing them as a product instead of a person. i am one of the first on this list. in no way am i blaming a people, without being the first to admit this is my issue too. i see people first by what they can do for me, then what they actually are doing for me and maybe eventually asking them who they actually are.

the thing that saddens and sickens me the most? the people i would call the closest to me, i know the very least. there are people in my life when push comes to shove i have no idea who they truly are, and yet i see them monthly, weekly, daily, they are my brother and my sisters, my friends and my mentors. i believe that elizabeth summed it up best for me the other day, in relating a story about her living situation she told me that her roommate made the assertion that, "they weren't intentional in not knowing each other." elizabeth responded with "no, but we were not intentional in getting to know each other, either." 

this cuts me down. how many people have i complained about not knowing, but in reality what am i doing about it?

enough about me.
what about you?

who have you been blessed with in your life?
how well do you truly know them?
not just the assumptions you have about who they might be.
how well do you know their hearts because they shared it with you?
how satisfied are you to have people in your life you don't know?
are you willing to do something about it?

i believe that it is time to start asking questions. deep ones. the only way to know someone is for them to share it. maybe we don't know others hearts, not because they don't want to tell us, but because we are unwilling to ask.

this would be a perfect seg-way into living a transparent life, how we are called to it, and it is part of being a bearer of the GOSPEL, but i am feeling the effects of my sinus medication kicking in, so i leave that for another day.
my moral of this story?
if you are in my life, be prepared for intentional knowing.
i want to know your heart.
i will not be satisfied with anything else.