Take Me Out To The Ball Game.

I love it.
Baseball, that is.
It is WONDERFUL.
I also love Mark Reynolds.
He is ADORABLE.
He plays third base for the Diamondbacks.
I caught a foul ball at the mlb game today.
My cousin was jealous.
I love baseball.

The Hardening

It seems to me that as we move through our relational lives we go from having soft light hearts to hard heavy hearts.
We start out loving and trusting and handing out our hearts left and right to anything and everything fantastic.
Over time these fantastic things, or fantastic people fail us and hand our heart back to us slightly bruised, or badly cut.
We invest in this world, and this world is broken.
In return we our left broken.
And so our hearts heal and strengthen.
Strengthen.
Harden.
Life is easier with a hard heart.
These fantastic things and fantastic people that our hearts were once drawn to and inevitably hurt by don't get through quite as easily.

A hard heart is a safe heart.
But what is there to lose?

In hardening our heart we abandon relationship.
The only true joy in life comes from relationship.
We as humans were made by our creator to be lovers.
Lovers of both him and others.
Which means allowing our hearts to invest in others, and allowing others to break our hearts.
But in the break it is not a matter of repair, it is a matter of continuation.
Despite personal hurt and pain, allowing our hearts to continue on.
To love those who hurt us.
To break again and again.
And not to harden.
To keep our focus on the father above who has asked but one thing of us.

To love.
To live broken lives for his glory.

Over the course of this summer I have come to the realization that I have allowed my heart to harden. This is not the easiest thing to fix. I am attempting to relearn trust and hope. Being hard has its advantages but as a close friend pointed out to me it lacks the beauty of a soft heart.

"We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home." To Write Love On her Arms