There was a time when my heart was not open.
It was vigilant,
Brilliant,
Armored in light.
It knew how to scan a room.
It knew how to perform healing.
It knew how to survive love.
And I don't judge it for that anymore.
It was protecting something sacred.
It was protecting me until I could come back.
But open.
Open is different.
Open does not brace.
Open does not negotiate safety.
Open does not curate itself for approval.
And open does not mean nothing hurts.
Open simply means I no longer have to leave myself when it does.
Somewhere in the 90s on a couch between wisdom and television,
I heard the words,
Dear God,
My heart is open.
Come,
Sit in my heart.
And something in me trembled,
Not because it was poetic,
Because it was dangerous.
To say that is to stop managing the divine.
To stop managing love,
To stop deciding what is allowed inside the sacred,
To stop managing how you are perceived while you are loving.
Dear God,
My heart is open.
Not fixed.
Not perfected.
Not healed into performance.
Just open.
Calm.
Sit here.
Sit in the ache.
Sit in the memory.
Sit in the places I once thought I had to heal before they could be holy.
Sit in the grief that has no timetable.
Sit in the anger I was taught was too much.
Sit in the longing.
Sit in the joy.
Sit in the parts of me that once believed love had conditions.
Sit in the body that learned urgency before peace.
Sit in the heart that learned to protect itself before it learned that it could simply be held.
Come,
Sit here.
I won't clean it up for you.
I won't make my grief more spiritual.
I won't turn my pain into a lesson before it has finished speaking.
I won't offer you only the parts of me that have already found the light.
If this heart is sacred,
Then all of it belongs.
Dear God,
My heart is open,
And perhaps that is enough.
Perhaps I don't have to search anymore.
Perhaps love isn't something I have to summon.
Perhaps love isn't something I have to earn,
Or become worthy of,
Or generate perfectly enough for it to remain.
Perhaps love is what remains when I stop abandoning myself to find it.
And perhaps it has been here all along.
Breathing me.
Holding me.
Waiting beneath all my becoming.
Dear God,
My heart is open,
Not because I am fearless,
Not because everything is healed,
Not because I finally understand what all of this has been for.
My heart is open because I am here.
And whatever arrives here can be met here.
Grief can sit here.
Joy can sit here.
Uncertainty can sit here.
The child I was can sit here.
The man I have become can sit here.
The life I thought I would have can sit beside the life that is actually here.
Nothing needs to be exiled from this heart anymore.
Dear God,
My heart is open.
Come sit in my heart.
Although perhaps you are already are.
Perhaps you are sitting here through every moment I thought I had been abandoned,
Perhaps beneath the fear.
Beneath the armor,
Beneath all that vigilance,
There was always this quiet place.
Untouched.
Unhurried.
Waiting.
Not for me to become someone else.
Only for me to come home.
Dear God,
My heart is open.
Set.
And if you sit,
I will too.
