From the Head to the Heart

In my early 20s, I bought my first house and had nine guys living with me to help pay the mortgage. It was nuts.  I was up late one night talking with a few buddies and they asked if I had been to Canada.

I said: “Nope, You?”
They said: ”Nope, wanna go?…It’s only a 20 hour drive.”

So we got up at 5am the next morning and took off to Canada. 

We took my old 1985 Subaru wagon I had just bought and on the way back we started hearing this: “click, click, click”.  My buddies said: “You should probably check that out” but I wasn’t too worried about it because I had recently topped off the oil and it was already a loud car.

Eventually the “click” turned into a “clunk” which got louder and louder until the engine blew and we ended up broken down on the side of the road and had to get a tow the rest of the way home.  I was so bummed. I loved that thing.

When our hearts go unchecked

I share that story because I feel like it portrays what can happen in our lives.  We get so busy with life that we don’t take the time to look at the “clicks” and “clunks” going in our heart sometimes until we “break down”.   That was me.  I was so focused on running a business, ministry, and trying to be a good dad and husband that I didn’t notice how much attention my heart really needed until it was too late.

My life exploded 10 years ago.

I was divorced with three little girls, bankrupt, lost a bunch of real estate, and was spiritually shattered. Most of my life, I had worked for nonprofits and churches, and I was now questioning everything I had believed in. It was a really intense time and I didn’t know what to do.

Reconnecting to your heart

That set me on this journey of reconnecting to my heart and emotions after spending my life unintentionally disconnecting from them.  I used to think the “click’s and “clunks” of emotional pain were just another thing in life to overcome so I would power through the pain, reframe it, ignore it, avoid it, dismiss it, numb it…anything but feel it.  That worked great for a while but it started dulling the emotions I did want to feel because the heart doesn’t work like that. You can’t pick and choose which emotions to numb…Once you numb one you numb them all.

Proverbs 4:23 says that “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” As you go through this week, I want to encourage you to guard your heart by taking moments to slow down, asking Holy Spirit to refresh you. Get out of your head and enter into your heart.

An Invitation for Men

Over the last 10 years I’ve spent thousands of hours and dollars searching for tools to help me reconnect to my heart.   Nothing seemed to work until I learned you can’t connect to your heart without your mind and your BODY.  Fast Forward…I finally found a process that worked and It’s out of this journey I created something I’m so excited to share with the Men of this church, the “Head to Heart” Challenge.  Over 6 weeks we’ll cover 6 tools and unpack 1 tool each week.