The Fine Line

As our sisterly ritual, my roommates and I often let our happy and even sad thoughts bounce off the four walls of our room as we lie in our beds in hopeful search of the answers to some of our biggest questions in life. Last night, I rhetorically asked them about the fine line between guarding your heart and risking everything in the name of love:

Where is it? This line between guarding your heart for in it are the sources of life and loving fearlessly and perfectly because anything less, frankly, cannot be truly love at all -- where do these grounds exist, and how can I place myself firmly there? I find myself approaching this fine line, but never really reaching it. 

It seems that I tend to fall way too far on one end of the spectrum. If I'm not recklessly wearing my heart on my sleeve, I am hiding it in a cave. Protecting your heart is wise and prudent, yes! But somehow, as I do it, I feel in some ways so afraid to leave this figurative tower I have built for myself. As if the opportunity cost of guarding my heart is love. I grow so fearful and almost cynical about the world that I am longing to love so deeply. Sometimes, I even lose sense of not just who I am, but who I am meant to be. 

In the midst of my rambling, my roommate Kathryn sits up and asks me to repeat the question because it seems that she might have an answer for me. Like a feather slowly falling onto her lap, she offers me peace of mind in three simple words:

At the Altar, she says. 

In the very moment that those words were graciously uttered, nothing could have made more sense. That fine line is where we gather together before Him for Mass or in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. The Altar is the heart to heart connection made in prayer before the Real Presence of Jesus. In coming to Him as we are - broken, wounded, and in need of healing, He protects us. He shields our hearts not from what might break them, but from what might shrink, pollute, and pervert them. God does this by pouring Himself out to us. By emptying us of all that He is not, He fills us with nothing but love. Nothing but Himself. 

I come to God so that he may do for me what I cannot -- to guard my heart and to love purely at the same time. I come to him because I do not protect my heart, He does. I cannot protect what I do not know. And truth be told, I cannot protect what I do not know how to love. I don't think I really know how to love and cherish my own heart; I'm far too selfish. Far too fearful.

More importantly, I am not the source of my own love. I cannot love without being loved by God first. There is nothing in this world that is mine. I should have nothing to fear when I love because this love will never run out and is always more than enough. The love I have, the love I give is the love that flows straight from the Altar where Christ offers himself up daily and totally for us to find our place in life and death, love and fear, and the Maker and His Beloved. 

Surrender in humility to God is our first and only step.