Heart-Keys

When I first began this journey seven years ago and started to write my thoughts for the world to read, I never expected I'd become part of so many stories. Never thought a girl from Alaska who struggled all her life to fit in would so willingly be trusted by people she never met to hold their deepest secrets with care. There's the fifteen year-old who lost both his parents by the age of six and is wrestling with the insecurity of adolescence, and he tells me I'm the first person he's ever met who wouldn't judge him. There's the twenty-something from New Zealand who has battled a speech impediment all his life. There's the college kid who reached out recently and is looking for a way to make peace with his past as he's recently become a Christian and wants a message to come out of his mess. There's the veteran who texted me and is going through a terrible divorce, saying that he knew he could trust me to listen. There's the university student in Europe who is finding himself drawn to the spiritual because he's noticing that, for me, God is not a formality but a lifestyle. There have been stories of adoption, loss, heartache, suicide, and survival. Stories of over-comers and stumblers, stories of hope and hardship. And every time it's like I'm being handed a key to open someone's heart. 

I well recall the first time I ever felt that: twelve years ago on January 28. When a young Marine and I spoke on the phone and discovered we were bound together in soul by mutual loss. Over the next six years, he would trust me with some of the most deeply personal parts of his past, and I was aware I likely knew information he wouldn't tell his therapists or even his own family. I remember how often I would remind myself of the privilege I'd been given to listen, to be present, to give him something nobody else in his life could: the gift of being seen and heard. 

All these years later, that Marine - my Alex - is gone but the lessons I learned walking through the journey with him have continued to open doors for me, leading to many more conversations with others as I welcome their honesty. This has become a life-work of sorts - gently holding people's stories in my heart and hands until they become strong enough to hold their own. Taking those heart-keys and carefully opening them up one little bit at a time. 

Perhaps this is all a part of what living is all about...discovering the hidden secrets we all want to keep from one another. Secrets we're too ashamed to let anyone see. Secrets that hold us back from experiencing each other's love as we're meant to. 

When the Bible says to confess your flaws to one another, it offers a promise that, when we do so, healing comes. Mending happens when we're willing to give our heart-key to a trusted one and let ourselves be opened, let all the chapters be read. Because there's Grace laced through it all and we'll never find it if we never let it out.

Looking back, I realize now that I've always been the one whom others trusted with their heart-keys. Even when I was little, the dismissed, rejected, misunderstood ones always seemed to gravitate to me. And yet, until a few years ago, I held my own heart-key close to my chest and wouldn't give it over. My hands were full of others' heart-keys but I resisted letting someone else hold my own. That is, until a friend one day begged to be let in. Asked me to trust him. Told me there were good people like himself who wanted to hold those secrets and weren't afraid of what they revealed. Good people who wanted to love me...if I would just simply let them. Would let go of the fears. Would trust them. Would trust God. 

And isn't that always the way? We don't trust God's messengers to help us, save us, love us because we don't trust Him enough! 

Fail to trust God and you fail to really believe others, too. You miss the open hands right in front of you because you're too scared to be real, too afraid to be raw. When all along, God is calling you into deeper surrender. When others are calling you to let the bad out to make room for the good...

I've walked enough journeys with others to know the satisfaction of hearing someone say, "If you hadn't been there..." and several times it's been followed with... "I probably wouldn't be here." Sometimes you don't know if you're meant to be someone's saving grace, to talk them back from the edge of despair. It's maybe your voice alone that can be God's voice when the only voice they hear is the one that says, "Give up." 

Live several stories through like this and you begin to see, we're all a walking story and we're all holding our own heart-keys, waiting for somebody to come along who will tell us we are worth discovering, opening, hearing out. And perhaps we all go right past each other sometimes because we don't realize we just may be the designated hope-giver another soul has been looking for. 

It could be I'm your heart-key holder or maybe you're one of mine. Maybe we're heart-key holders for other people. But I promise you: we're heart-key holders for a special someone (or multiple someones!) out there. There's a song only you can sing to their inner being. There's a message only you can give to their deepest longing. There's a hope only you can bring to their greatest dying. 

Something magical happens when we get up the courage to hand over that heart-key and say yes: yes to healing, yes to life, yes to hope, yes to being known and understood, yes to love, and yes to Him. And yes to all the amazing ones out there who want to give all this and more to our aching selves. 

So maybe today you just need permission: permission to tell someone something you've always been afraid to voice... permission to turn loose of the heart-key and allow another caring soul to open you up and find the real, amazing you that's hidden inside... permission to stop holding all your secrets inside when the One who knows you best died to free you from all those very secrets and desires you to live an open, honest life. 

You may be surprised at what can happen with your story when you let it out. I certainly have been. And all these incredible people I've met along the way have, too. We're all a big survivors club, evidence that God isn't done with us yet and that He's piecing together all our broken and turning us into wounded healers of sorts that bring goodness to a desperate world in need of love. 

Perhaps your story doesn't need to stay hidden.

Perhaps it only needs to be set free...