“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, and irredeemable.” C. S. Lewis

 

“I understand now that the vulnerability I’ve always felt is the greatest strength a person can have. You can’t experience life without feeling life. What I’ve learned is that being vulnerable to somebody you love is not a weakness, its strength.“ 
– Elisabeth Shue

 

I have a vulnerable heart.

My heart has been broken, crushed and trampled to millions of pieces so many times that I feel it will never survive another major disaster in life.  This scares me all the more considering at almost 41 years and God-willing, I may live another 40 years more.  Nothing can assure me that from this moment on to the last of my dying breath, my heart will never be broken again.  Because of this, I constantly feel fear that any time soon; this heart will have to face another catastrophe again.  It pains me to think how can I survive?  This is how vulnerable I am at this moment.

Somebody wisely said, to truly love someone means opening your heart to the pain.  It is vulnerability.  However because of past experiences being terribly hurt tremendously by the person you love, it is normal that you are constantly wary and fearful.  It seems you are building an invisible wall in your heart trying to protect it from being hurt again.  Every little doubtful situation will cause your heart to pound with distress as you feel yourself being sucked up by bad memories causing you to be very suspicious.  The walls surrounding your heart are up a hundred fold to keep it from breaking into pieces again.  Because of your obvious distress, your eyes are physically and emotionally dimmed to the point of being temporarily blind; you don’t and won’t listen to anything sensible because all you feel is the fear that it is going to happen again.

It’s been a year.  Yes, I can say I have physically and emotionally moved on.  Although I have not gone far but I am glad to say I was able to move several feet away from all the ugliness.  Yet, being vulnerable makes it truly difficult to continue with the progress especially when your trust has been broken and you have to suffer the crushing of your self esteem.  Many times I am frustrated with myself because I know I wasn’t like this before.  I never looked at myself in the mirror disdainfully despite my flabs and fats.  Yes, I have my dark moods while growing up being a melancholic but I knew I was able to overcome this through my achievements that built self confidence.  Yet today, I feel I’m back to square one with no more strength to build myself up once more.

In my vulnerability, I realized I cannot do this on my own.  While I may not be young anymore and my heart is doubly tired, I feel in my weakness God is my strength.  While on my knees in deep prayer with my usual ramblings to Him, He gently reminded me that He is still the Lord of my life.  It is just like bungee jumping from the top of the Eiffel Tower.  I felt myself plunging fast to my impending doom when suddenly a strong and elastic cord on my heel broke my fall.  God is my elastic cord.  I should trust Him that He will not let go of me.

Human as I am, every time I feel being thrust towards the nightmare, I would ask for assurance not to be hurt once more.  Yet, I realized I am putting my trust and faith towards someone who is as human as I am.  This is the reason why, I can still feel an impending doom hovering.  I do not have the inner peace I am searching for. I cannot continually move on and I am trapped.  I felt the only way for me to be shielded from being hurt is to put my heart in a casket—safe from everything and everyone.  Yet, I know this is a cowardly way of moving on.

Trust in God ONLY.  Yes, this is what I have learned; what I am continually trying to embrace each day of my life.  This is the only time vulnerability becomes strength.