“Does anybody know how to hold my heart
How to hold my heart?
‘Cause I don’t want to let go, let go, let go too soon
I want to tell you so before the sun goes dark
How to hold my heart
‘Cause I don’t want to let go, let go, let go of you”
– Sara Bareilles, “Hold My Heart”
Does anybody know how to hold their heart? Does anybody really know how to guard their heart? Oh, sure, we can write about it. We can pray for it. We can beg God to help us guard our hearts, but at the end of the day, does anyone really know how to hold your heart and keep it safe?
Goodness knows that we don’t want to let our hearts go too soon. Even in a relationship we have to guard our heart. It is a scary thing (and rightfully so) to dive in with our whole hearts and lay everything on the line in the very beginning of a relationship. Heck, it can be scary to lay your heart out there even in a stable, long-term relationship. So we beg and plead, does anyone know how to hold my heart?
I’ve had my share of relationships gone wrong. Relationships, even, when promises of the future were laid out before me like a dream come true. There have been relationships when we promised that we’d never hurt each other, that we’d guard each others’ hearts as if they were the most important thing in the world. You can imagine, then, how well I related to these lyrics when each of those relationships met its end. Did anyone know how to hold my heart? Sure, they could hold it, but did anyone know how to hold it and keep it safe? No matter how I tried to hold on, to guard it as best I could, it somehow always seemed I’d let go too soon as I found myself asking yet again, does anyone know how to hold my heart?
Oh, sure, I thought to myself, someone knows how to guard my heart. But can’t there be someone else, too? God knows how to guard our hearts. God holds our hearts because He made them and He loves more tenderly than we can fathom. We don’t even have to tell Him how to hold them because He knows our hearts better than we do. On a spiritual level, that’s enough, isn’t it? But on a human level, on an emotional level, don’t we want more? Don’t we desire to find that someone who knows and wants to hold our heart? I dare say we do.
I want to tell you so before the sun goes dark…my heart stops right there. Of course we want to tell that someone how we feel before the sun goes dark, before they leave our side, before it is too late. However, there is a balancing act, an act of holding our hearts and still diving in and being open to a relationship. It begs the question, once again, how do we hold and guard our hearts? The answer is simple, really. We guard our hearts by letting our hearts rest in Him. We hold our hearts by letting Him hold them and allowing Him to gift them to whomever He chooses. In fact, Sara Bareilles has the answer wrapped up in her lyrics, “’cause I don’t want to let go of…You.” Anything or anyone that leads us to let go of Him, in however small a way, isn’t someone we should be giving our hearts to, and isn’t someone He wants to hold our hearts. Cling simply doesn’t state the point firmly enough, but cling to Him. Allow Him to hold your heart and the rest will fall into place.
“God alone created your heart, and He created it for Himself. He alone should be its master.” – The Imitation of Mary