Am I Going to Be OK? A Guarded Heart

Guarding the heart is like guarding a place that holds something of great value. Author Holley Gerth says, it’s like when a King sets up the defense system in his castle. There are guards, walls, motes, crocodiles in the motes, electrified fences, motion-sensing alarms, metal detectors, x-ray and sonogram machines at the gates, satellite-intercom systems, weaponized drones with cameras feeding video to the head of security 24/7, navy-seal/secret service officers wired for constant/instant communication…well, you get the drift…I’ve watched all the James Bond movies, so I know what I’m talking about!

If you think about it, all these defense mechanisms have three basic roles:

1. Keeping harmful things out

2. Letting good things in

3. Letting the king go out into the world to spread cheer

This is kind of what guarding the heart is like. According to the author of You’re Going to Be OK, guarding the hear is “an in-and-out flow we carefully watch.” (71) However, she says, we run the risk of sometimes, focusing way too much on only one of the three main roles, that we neglect the others, causing our heart-guarding efforts to become unbalanced.

When this happens, then, four other things develop:

1. We go on heart-lockdown: we close up. Nothing comes in or out of our hearts.

2. We open for all business: there is no protection. We let everything in.

3. Exit only: we allow some stuff out, like giving our time and resources, but we don’t let anyone or anything come in.

4. Entrance only: we get all we can get from others, but we don’t give anything.

This sounds extreme. The trick is not to see them as static categories. In my case, I’m not just one of them. I have experienced a combination of these situations at times. I’d say that in my case, I’m more of a person who tends to go into lockdown/exit only mode. For instance, often I feel insecure about my adequacy as a Mother, Wife, teacher, you name it. In those moments, I go into lockdown. I isolate myself. I project my own rejection of self onto others, and I don’t let anyone in or out. I shot down. Like a storefront in a ghost town. There are other times, and I see this happening quite a bit with my students, I give my time and dedication to them in the classroom; but I stay distant. I don’t want to get too close to them, because I don’t want to be involved in their personal dramas. I call it “protecting myself.” However, it seems more like a deliberate attempt to keep the relationship as a business transaction: impersonal.

I call going into these modes, “guarding” my heart. However, I’m learning that what I call “guarding” is actually a disruption of the flow.

A guarded heart shows the following characteristics:

1. When a heart is guarded, emotions are felt and expressed appropriately.

2. When a heart is guarded, relationships are based on give and take.

3. When a heart is guarded, Jesus is on the throne.

We will continue exploring what the author means by these three characteristics, so we can start recognizing what a truly guarded heart looks like. Let’s continue this tomorrow. Hopefully, we’ll discover some useful stuff in here.