An Open Heart

I went to the dentist today to get a filling (which, by the way, is the WORST). My dentist lets us listen to music to drown out the drilling and also wear sunglasses so the exam light doesn't blind us. She's quite thoughtful, really. I put on a playlist I had made for a yoga intensive and on that playlist was "Fight Song" by Rachel Platten. It's a powerful song she wrote about taking back her life and getting back to who she is, amidst a lot of hardship. So, I'm sitting in the dentist chair, mouth pried open with some kind of torture device, getting my teeth drilled by an actual torture device, completely numb and drooling, trying not to audibly sob while I think about my powerful friend who absolutely embodies this song right now. Thank goodness for the sunglasses. I mean, what is WRONG with me? Who gets choked up in the dentist's chair?

A good friend recently gave me a children's Christmas book by Nancy Tillman. We have a number of her books but not The Spirit of Christmas so I was thrilled to receive it. But let me tell you about Nancy Tillman: lady makes me UGLY CRY. Like, openly weep. Oh, that's so sweet, you say. Yeah, not when it freaks out your children who haven't quite figured out what a sentimental sap you are and instead are wondering Did you get an owie, Mama?

From Tillman's My Love Will Find You

I was not always this way!

While my talent for choking up is genetic, I wasn't always so susceptible (a.k.a. I didn't always need sunglasses in the dentist's chair). I don't particularly enjoy wearing my heart on my sleeve but two things have happened to me in my life that have ripped my heart wide and opened the floodgates: I had my heart broken and then I had children.

Having someone you love hurt you is devastating. Whether they break-up with you, leave you or pass away, it is debilitating. The heart, while a muscle, breaks like a bone. It can shatter into a million pieces. To say this hurts is an understatement. But out of this shattered matter fuses a heart stronger than the one before.

The second thing, having children, made my heart burst. The levies that surrounded my heart gave way. There was not a powerful enough border to contain what transpired (and transpires) in my heart due to these little monsters running around my house. The love was (and is) overwhelming. Yet just like my heartbreak from years prior left me disassembled, so this bursting left me in pieces. Pieces that were glued together in a makeshift way, as if the cause of the burst (my children) were doing the repair themselves.



One could argue that a reassembled heart is weaker and more vulnerable to re-breaking. I suppose that's true. At least, it's true if we accept society's definition of strength as having a hard, unbreakable shell. I'm thinking I reject that definition and I'll tell you why.

A heart with cracks can let more OUT, too. A heart that knows it's been broken and survived has the ability to be braver because it knows where it's been. It has been to the depths and lived to tell the tale. All the seams present from the repairs are not scars but rather passageways through which love can pass.

I think of a piece of ceramic pottery that has been repeatedly repaired and forged back together after years of wear and tear. Against the odds, it maintains its structure but it also leaks. This is my heart. It is a leaky, glued together albeit strong, piece of pottery. It allows light and love in more easily than it used to, and releases them with more generosity.

It is precisely in the leaking (in the gaps) that my strength lies.

Five years ago, my dad had a quintuple bypass. The day he had surgery, I was far away in San Francisco where I lived at the time. Picturing him lying on an operating table with his chest open - his heart open - scared me tremendously. My sentimental, generous, hard-working, loving and amazing father was in the most vulnerable position ever: lying on a table with his heart completely open. I was so worried that he would never be the same.

A lot of things have changed since my dad had surgery. For one, he now has six grandchildren for whom his love flows out of his leaky heart like a river. Thankfully he is in good health now and ready and willing to audibly sob at any feel-good movie or children's book (he can't get through a Tillman, either). His heart has been reassembled stronger than ever, thanks to its scars and cracks. I'd argue that his heart and capacity to love is stronger now than it has ever been. He knows where he's been and what he's survived and rather than being unwilling to re-open that scarred heart of his, his commitment to love through the cracks is unyielding.