“This is going to tell us if there are any underlying conditions in your heart.” explained the nurse as she attached the EKG sensors to me. “It can tell us if there is any damage or if your have had a heart attack and not realized it.”
My pulse quickened as I lay there on the table looking up at the ceiling wondering what they might find. This machine sitting on the table next to me was about to tell me if my worst fears have come true, that there is something wrong with my heart and as much as I tried to relax, I couldn’t. There’s no hiding from this. There’s no room for denial when the wires attached to you are reading the impulses of your heart. Will the years of neglect finally have caught up with me? Will this be the moment I’ve been dreading where the doctor tells me that yes my heart is sick?
Thankfully all was normal and I’ve been given a clean bill of health. There were no signs of problems that could lead to heart disease, or a heart attack. No, it seems that the exercise that I have been mustering all of my willpower to do over this past year has had a positive effect on this heart of mine that is so used to taking the abuse of the unhealthy ways I tend to deal with the stress and pain in my life. There was a look of shock on the sweet nurse’s face as she read my blood pressure expecting it to be high, and it wasn’t. “Wow your blood pressure is good!”, she said looking a little astonished. I have to admit, I was a little shocked too.
Even though I walked out of the doctor’s office last week with a report that my heart is healthy, I know the truth. I know that the spiritual condition of my heart is far from healthy. Even our most advanced technology cannot pick up on the pain and the poison from my past that is lurking deep within my heart waiting to erupt. I know the crater-sized hole there, left from a devastating decision I made; I know all the cracks and crevasses longing to be filled with the love and acceptance I have not felt; and the hole there left by my husband who promised to love me forever, but changed his mind. I know all too well, these things about my heart.
But so does my Great Physician. He does not need advanced technological devices to look deep within my heart to see what its underlying condition is. He already knows the damage and the scars there, and he knows the problems they will cause if he does not treat them. If I let Him, he will lovingly take each hurt and bring healing to it. Those places of hurt can be filled with a love so wide and so deep, that there will not be even a tiny crack remaining that is not filled by it.
But I need to be willing to come and lay on His examining table and allow Him to do that work in me. When His work in me is finally complete, and I walk out with the report that my heart is well, I can know for sure that it is. Jesus is the only one who can bring healing and health to our broken and scared hearts. Jesus is the only answer. It is with Jesus, and only Jesus that my heart truly can be healthy.
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