Hello friends. Thank you for continuing to walk this journey with me. Today’s post is a bit of what I learned as I fought through the lies I mentioned last week.

The day after I had written down the lies and burned the paper (as an act of offering them to the All Consuming Fire) to get rid of those lies, I sat and asked for Truth to come and fill those spaces in my heart again. Below is what I felt God said in response:

“My Beloved,

Thank you for ridding yourself of those nasty lies last night. Keep watch so they don’t return. THAT is where guarding your heart comes in. I don’t want you to guard your heart against hope but against lies that cause you to build walls of false protection that become a prison for your heart. Banishing hope beyond those walls only makes the prison stronger and bleaker. Trust and hope break down walls and free your heart to love and run with me and be loved fully.”

During the last few years of praying and hoping for things and being disappointed repeatedly, I wrestled with how to “guard my heart” as scripture says. How do I keep it from the sickness that comes from deferred hopes without blocking out hope completely. It felt like hoping for things, even things I felt God had spoken – like getting to return to Ireland or one day being loved and chosen by someone to spend life with – went against guarding it, because hope just seemed to set it up for brokenness and sickness over and over.

As I saw those words flow from the pen in my journal, it was as though a lightbulb was switched on in my head. Guarding my heart from hope, or even from disappointment, isn’t the goal. Yes, hopes might be deferred and disappointed, but it’s the lies we listen to in the midst of those delays and disappointments that make our heart sick.

The lies might say we will never be loved, that we are aren’t worthy because we’re too much or not enough, that we’ve messed up too badly for God to use us. Those lies block us from trusting God, from hope, from living in our identity and calling. Those lies are the weapons the Enemy uses to steal kill and destroy, leaving us bound in prisons that masquerade as protection.

Are hope and trust hard? Yes. Is it scary to love and trust and hope again/still when we’ve been hurt and broken? Definitely! But is it courageous and worth it and healthy to stay open to love and hope? Absolutely and always!