I forgot about the following entry, I think from a book from John Eldredge ‘The Sacred Romance’, and surprised how it resonated today.

The Sacred Romance
“There are only two things that pierce the human heart, one is beauty, the other affliction.
We cannot deny the Arrows have struck us all, sometimes arriving in a hail of projectiles that blocked out the sun, and other times descending in more subtle flight that only let us know we were wounded years later, when the wound festered and broke.

What will we do with the Arrows we’ve known, or what have they tempted us to do? But to say we all face a decision when we’re pierced by an arrow is misleading. It makes the process sound so relational, as though we have the option of coolly assessing the situation and choosing a logical response. The heart cannot be managed in a detached sort of way. It feels more like and ambush and our response is at gut level. Our deepest convictions are formed without conscious effort, but the effect is a shift deep in our soul.

There was a girl I loved but couldn’t love, intimacy requires a heart that is released and mine was pinned down with unknown arrows of fears and grief and so I let her go. I place that last Arrow in my heart that day and shoved it cleanly though. I did it to kill the tears of mourning inside that would have insisted that there was something I had lost.

I had no one to help me understand the ambivalence created by the messages of the arrows. So I became my own author and killed the one to control the other. I broke my engagement. I gave up the mystery of the Romance for a story that was much more predictable – which is to say, aloneness. Yet there was still an ache and longing for something and someone, I couldn’t quite define and felt agitated and betrayed b such feelings, I pushed them down refusing to be healed. I lived those years in a tangled web of fantasy divorced from present living and reality. The outer story became the theater of the should and the inner story the theater of needs, the place where we quench the thirst of our heart with whatever water is available – sexual fantasies, alcohol, violent videos… The heart deadens and the arrows win.

The things we do to protect and preserve our hearts usually end up hurting us more. To choose to shut your heart to love – so that you won’t be hurt – is to deny the very thing you are made for. To demand perfection of yourself so that no one will ever criticize you again is to lay an intolerable burden on your back.

We must renounce our childhood vows. They trap our hearts, pin them down. They destroy us by getting us to agree with the lies. The pain makes the message of the Arrow seem so true, so deep inside; we believe the lie and make the vow. It is important to break the vow so it may not have a strong hold on our hearts.”

The things we do… my heart cried again when I re-read those words. I’d like to say that when I read them the first time some 20 years ago I was able to heal the wounds and break the vows I made… was in the possess of making after being hurt… I didn’t though, I held on tight. Today I wonder how many remain and how they have shaped my experiences.

At the time when I added my thoughts to the authors words I noted a memory of my 10 year old self making a vow to not be hurt again. I wonder if it was the moment I became a Enneagram type 5. I don’t recall the circumstances only how lost the young boy was.

Read a novel over the holidays –

The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife

by Anna Johnston. The author asked herself if someone could redeem another persons life and then wrote her book. I love the book, funny and poignant, definitely worth reading.

Redemption and forgiveness, second chances and Found Family…. I wonder about the lost young boy making vows and the now old man.

Prayer
Somewhere deep inside my heart is wounded within me. I fear to even open up these places, and yet I long to be free. So come, take me by the hand, and lead me into the Arrows of my heart. Only do not leave me there but lead me thought to the fields of gladness and joy. – John Eldredge