Heart Surgery

Don't panic! I'm talking about spiritual surgery - not physical! God showed me this morning that I have had, not just heart surgery, but a total heart transplant!

Ezekiel 36:26-27 has long been a favorite passage of mine. It has prominent post-it note places in both the personal and family sections of my prayer notebook. (I have told you I'm queen of the post-it notes, haven't I??) Ezekiel recorded God's promise to Israel - and to me -
"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws."

This morning God spoke to me once again through this powerful passage. I've recently had random encounters with several friends that I'd not seen in a couple of years. Each time, their first comments have been about my weight loss and each time, followed quickly with the question, "How did you do it?" I don't know why the question took me by surprise. But the first time, it really did. I stammered and fumbled an explanation like I didn't have half a brain. I guess I just hadn't really thought about it in a long time. I've maintained my weight loss for over a year now and losing isn't an issue for me any more. Now, it's the daily business of maintaining. (Which, I'll have to admit, is, at times, the more difficult of the two!) But, you know what - the process is the same. Eat healthy foods in healthy amounts and incorporate lots of healthy activity. It's the only way anyone ever effectively loses weight and it's the only way any of us maintain it.

I have had a couple of people ask if a serious illness caused my weight loss. The first time this question was posed, I was kind of taken aback because I thought I looked healthy . . . not like I'd been sick for a long time. Geez - what's up with this? But this morning, God showed me that I HAD, indeed, had a serious illness - a problem with my heart. He told me He had performed an amazing heart transplant. Didn't I realize that?? He has shown me that the spiritual surgery He performed was the catalyst for my weight loss. WOW! Thank You, my Great Physician Father!

For many years of my life, I took every emotional twinge of pain . . . every disappointment . . . every failure . . . and stuffed them into dark corners of my heart. Little by little they went unnoticed or ignored. Occasionally they would begin to stack up and cause discomfort. Most of the time, I'd pack them down a little tighter to make room for the next bruise. Over the years, areas of my heart became so full of packed down hurts that it became hard and calloused. Parts of it were walled off with bricks I'd protectively stacked as defense mechanisms against the next wound. Eventually, my heart quit functioning the way God designed it to function. As a result, I entered the wilderness of dark depression and found myself so dead to all hope and passion in life, that I no longer cared about my health. I ate to try to satisfy my aching heart. But food was not what it needed. All the excess food over all the years did nothing for my heart but add to its trouble by making me physically unhealthy, emotionally ill and spiritually sick.

Then my wonderful Abba intervened! Through the years, I may have stuffed my wounds instead of taking them to Him for healing. But you know what? He saw them anyway! There is no dark corner of my heart that the light of His love cannot penetrate. There is no place inside myself I can retreat that He will not find me. There is no brick wall His eyes of love cannot see past. Not only had my heavenly Father seen every wound, He had lived through them with me. And He cared very deeply and personally.

One by one, my surgeon Father began to sever the arteries to that old hard heart and reconnect them to a new heart that was soft and pliable in His hands. It wasn't a particularly pleasant experience at times. There was definite pain involved - enough to prompt a plentiful supply of tears. But as the life giving blood began to flow through that new heart and His Spirit began to pour His love into it, oh the transformation! My new heart was soft, strong, warm, teachable - and beating! I became alive again and filled with the energizing presence of His Spirit. My life was full of hope and passion . . . and JOY - joy unspeakable!

Oh how wondrously true the last sentence of the above scripture. "I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws." The utmost desire of my heart - my NEW heart - is to please HIM. Everything in me cries out to walk in perfect sync with His Spirit's steps. I want to hear. I want to obey. I want to fully trust. I want to be who He planned for me to be when he knit me together in my mother's womb.

Oh, my precious Abba, thank You for my new heart! I've known people who have had (physical) heart surgery and then gone right back to their unhealthy habits and ruined all the work their surgeon did. Help me take good care of the new heart You've given me. Help me keep it clean and pure and well lit by the light of Your love. May there be no dark corners for hiding things - shine Your light into every one! Pour Your love into every corner until there is room for nothing else. And, Father, when my heart is as full as it is right now, would you let me spill some of Your love, light, and living water into the lives of others?