Guard your heart, girl!

"Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." Proverbs 4:23

Our hearts house who we are...our desires. As John Eldredge says in his book, Desire, "Everything that makes life worth living flows from the heart. Intimacy, romance, love. Adventure and meaning and purpose. Courage and sacrifice and joy." No wonder we're told to guard our hearts!

I can't count the number of times that I've been told as a Christian single to "guard my heart" in regards to relationships with the opposite sex. I fully agree that girls do need to guard their hearts in those relationships, but I also think it extends beyond those relationships and beyond applying only to girls!

I think we overlook guarding our hearts with friends because we think we need to share everything with every friend. I had to learn the hard way that every friend can't be trusted with my entire heart. I'm sure that I'm not the only person that has experienced the hurt and pain that comes from a friend when you realize you've trusted them with a part of you/your heart that they couldn't handle. I will admit that it's hard to determine who to share what with without being fake! I finally learned that there are degrees of truth. This has allowed me to be the real me with all my friends, but each friendship has its own level of truth. I have friends who are, what I call, my heart friends. These are the friends that I can bare my soul to and know they can be trusted with that information. Those heart friends were determined over time because character had to be revealed.

It's hard to know to what extent to guard your heart in relationships, but I've found that it's good to land somewhere in the middle of the two extremes of too open and too guarded. I've been both extremes. We all know that when we're too open, pain is inevitable! Being too guarded can be painful, too. It causes us to close ourselves off to what could be really great relationships. I don't think God wants us to live life this way. We were built for relationship with Him and others. Some of my greatest learning lessons have come out of situations where I let the guard down. Those lessons haven't always been painless; but, as someone once told me, "Stretching and growing is always painful." I don't want to be so guarded that I miss out on something that could be really great!