Guarding My Heart

As a young Christian, I was told to guard my heart. No one told me what that meant or how to go about it; I was just expected to do it. I naively assumed that guarding my heart equated to protecting myself from the opposite sex. The obvious way to protect myself from the pain a boy could cause was to avoid them altogether. And I succeeded for many years at doing just that.

Then I met a boy who said nice things and made me feel special. All attempts to guard my heart went right out the window. I foolishly placed my tender heart in the hands of this boy who did not cherish or help me guard it. He crushed my poor little heart. Tore it apart piece by piece. Shattered it. I was devastated.

After I picked up the pieces of my heart and attempted to fit them back together, I found myself asking, “How do I guard my heart?” I didn’t find any answers to my question, so I went back to avoiding men.

Recently I’ve decided that avoiding the opposite sex is no longer desirable. I’d like to become good friends with the single men in my life—one in particular. (I’m already pretty good at being friends with the married males in my life.) Guarding my heart has to be different than putting up walls between myself and someone who has the potential to hurt me. If I lived like that, I wouldn’t have any friends. And I certainly wouldn’t ever find myself in a more-than-friends relationship.

So now that I’d like to forge a friendship with this particular male, I find myself questioning the mandate to guard my heart. Maybe the reason to guard my heart is not to simply protect myself from getting hurt. Perhaps guarding my heart means reigning in my occasionally wild emotions and curbing my overactive imagination. Undoubtedly I’m to guard my heart from being filled with desires for something other than God’s will.

This week when my mind wanders to the very godly and good looking man he’s placed in my life, instead of wondering what life would look like if we were married, I’ll take the high road. I’ll ask the Lord to take my fleshly desires and replace them with the desires of his heart. And in doing so, I’ll protect my own heart from leading me down a path of sin and pain.

“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”
Proverbs 4:23

“Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
Psalm 37:4