Here's My Heart, Lord, Speak What is True

   Put your hand on your chest. You feel that constant thudding?  Social media often prompts you to do this so that you can feel your "purpose" beating inside of you, which is a little too abstract for me, but really, how cool is that? You're not even thinking about it and your heart is pumping about 2000 gallons of blood a day. 2000 gallons. When I start to think about what incredible things the organs are doing like that I begin to get really nervous because I know how intricate they are and how much heavy duty stuff they're doing. Luckily, however, I need not worry about such things because the maker of my heart is also the keeper of it. Unlike my car engine, when my heart stops working the manufacture of it collects the model and tweaks it until it runs forever. Cool, right?

   Today I went to a Tuesday night sermon/worship deal that I go to pretty regularly and we were worshipping to "Here's my heart" by Passion. The worship leader made some comment about how he heard no one knows what makes our heart start beating in the medical field and that's cool because we as Christians know what makes our hearts start beating. Well, he's partially correct. The medical field actually does know what makes our heart start beating, however they only know it in medical terms as "electricity". We know that this "electricity" very well may exist (yet I keep putting it in quotation marks for some reason...) but that it doesn't just happen on it's own. The maker of the stars and of life and of babies jump starts your heart and breathes life into your lungs and counts the hairs on your head before you're even depending on yourself to stay alive. I try to imagine what that must be like. The same God that created the Swiss Alps and Saturn and a sunflower wove my skin together, touched my heart (literally), blew up my lungs, and kissed the 643rd hair on my head. Let it sink in because that is CRAZY. You have literally been touched by God himself.

  I find it interesting that I know this but I don't think of it every day.  The only time I focus on my breathing is during my daily yoga (deep, cleansing breaths fellow yogis), but how precious is that breath? The only time I think about my heart beating is when I have one of those migraines where your heart is beating into your head, but how huge is each beat? I cry out to God again and again in school, asking for help and for success and for sanity, and again and again he grants just that to me, but every single semester I just do the same thing over again. When will I learn? When will I take what we might consider the most basic of bodily functions as precious as they are? When will I trust the one who made that heart or that breath in all areas of my life, always, without any doubts?

   I think I find it most interesting that we're the only creatures who live like this. One of the lines in my prayer journal from July 13th states:
     "As I sit in bed by my bedroom window, I hear thousands of crickets singing your praise in their own language. As soon as night falls they sing your praise until dawn and I think I could learn a lot from such a creature. You are higher, God."
The sun rises every day, warming the earth and reminding us of the great romance that is in Christ Jesus. The wind blows and unravels that same love story. The crickets chirp all night by my window, crying out to God. When will I learn that I should do the same? My heart is beating. My lungs are filling. God hasn't let me down yet, even when I thought he did. When will I wake up in the morning and sing praises until I fall back asleep?

So to God I say I'm sorry. I'm sorry I don't take as breath as preciously as I should. I'm sorry I doubt you again and again, even though I know that where I am is where you want me to be. You have gotten me through the very tip-top highs and the super down-hill lows. You have never once left my side. You have always provided for me, always been faithful, always been knitting me together as if I were still in your palm. And I can say right now in this moment, though I'm sure my human nature will cause me to doubt this in the future, You will always be by my side, always be providing, always be knitting. Even when it seems like you're not, I know that you are. Always.

"You are strong, you are sure,

You are life, you endure,

You are good, always true,

You are light breaking through,

You are more than enough,

You are here, you are love,

You are hope, you are grace,

You're all I have, You're everything,

Here's my heart Lord,

Here's my heart Lord,

Here's my heart Lord,

Speak what is true."