Guard your heart

One of the more insidious of all the Post Evangelical Christian sub-culture phrases is “guard your heart.” This phrase, often said to me by other women when I revealed the onset of a new crush, dashed my hopes like nothing else. I always heard it as:

“You have a snowball’s chance in hell of that boy liking you back,”

Or…

“Don’t let yourself entertain anything frivolous that is not directly related to doing the will of God through ministry.”

Or…

“You don’t want what happened last time to happen again, do you?”

It was, I thought, a remarkable lack of generosity masking itself as “godly wisdom,” and hinted at the modern day church’s inability to see God as anything but a deity who only ever acted in a prescriptive, prosaic manner. Yawn.

In my early 20s there was nothing more thrilling or more devastating (and that was part of the thrill then) than a new crush. So much potential. Someone to think about during the unpleasant or mundane aspects of day-to-day life.

Having been sobered by the indulgence of a slew of ill-fated (often long-standing) crushes by this time, the last of which has ended just 7 months shy of my 32nd birthday, I would say that it’s time to revisit the old “guard your heart” mantra.

The spirit of this message is not, I realize now, “don’t have hope,” but “don’t get ahead of yourself.” “Make sure this investment is sound before you put everything on the table.” I knew what it was supposed to mean a long time ago, but still resisted the sentiment on principle. I believed that it was woefully unimaginative and restricted the extravagance of a loving God. I conveniently forgot that God, in all of his lush and luxurious gifts, never once flouts His own will or the integrity of his own character or Word (which may often frustrate my concept of logic, not because He is illogical, but more because He is in no way bound to my idea of what “makes sense” and what does not.).

In thinking of Frost’s poem about the diverging roads in a wood, I am forced to ask myself, would taking the other road, for once, make all the difference? Next time I will do the unthinkable. I will guard my heart.