Dedicated to my Elkhart friends in the ministry of holding hearts: Velinda, Kendra, Sarah, Lloyd and Bev, Reuben, Brad, Justin and Laura, and all others who care about people.
I need to tell you sometime about how I slipped my gloved fingers around a beating heart and felt the power of each beat like an explosion against the palm of my hand.
What I can’t stop thinking about right now, is what happened after I touched the heart. Dr. Halloran asked me to hold the heart while he sewed the back of it. This is an easy little job on paper: you just put your hand on the heart and hold it in place while the surgeon sews.
When the time came, the heart was flooded with the electrolytes that halt the beating motion. Dr. Halloran put his own left hand on the heart.
“Hold it just like this, with your left hand… and your fingers here,” he said.
The heart, no longer pulsing with power, felt limp and sad, but I put my hand on it, trying to imitate what I had just seen. Dr. Halloran began to sew, with needles that are almost too small to see.
After a minute or two, I thought, perhaps this job isn’t as easy as I thought. Even though it wasn’t moving anymore, the heart had a life of it’s own. I felt like I was holding onto a bag of jelly that was gradually shifting its center and sliding down.
“I feel like I let it slip,” I finally said quietly.
“You did, but that’s okay,” Dr. Halloran said as he continued sewing.
I didn’t feel okay about it, and I was relieved when my assignment ended.
Later, after the surgery, he said I could come into surgery again sometime, and maybe the next time I wouldn’t “let the heart drop”. I could tell he was teasing, but I began chattering with alarm.
“Dr. Halloran,” I said in a panic, “did I mess it up?”
He laughed.
“I know how to tell you how to hold the heart,” he replied.
I think I waste a lot of time some days talking to God just like that, perhaps after I’m “handling someone’s heart” in the thick of some emotional or psychological battle.
“God,” I say at the end of the day in a panic, “did I mess it up?” Because, I often don’t know what I’m doing. What do I know about all the variations of dysfunction in our world? How can I be real about the dysfunction in my own life and still persevere in the hope that if God could have mercy enough on me to let me assist Him, there is hope for everyone? How can I cling unequivocally to the knowledge that God is bigger than any dysfunction, any disease, even big enough to transcend my own inadequacy?
So often I’m doing something I’ve never done before…facing something I didn’t even realize could exist in our world! …trying to hold someone’s heart, and I feel it slipping from my hand.
I then run to God in a panic of dismay and sadness and even despair sometimes, and he smiles at me for taking myself so seriously, and He keeps sewing, keeps creating the miracle that is His.
“I know how to tell you how to hold the heart,” He says, and incredibly, He invites me to help again.
God’s work in someone’s life, is His work, not mine. As long as I’m faithful to do what He asks, I’m not going to wreck it. Yes, he needs me to act, and the more experience I get the better and more efficient things may be. It is my privilege and delight to sometimes be a part of that miracle, just as other people were a part of the miracle in my heart.
But at the end of the day, I don’t have to carry the weight of the miracle.
God knows exactly what he’s doing, and the miracle is all His.
6 thoughts on “Holding the Heart”
Thank you for sharing that. I teach and often wonder if I leave a positive impact in the stress of the moment, but in His plan, I can be used…despite my humanity. Keep writing!
touching analogy Katrina…I often think of how I (want to anyway) hold the hearts of my children and take the best care of it. Many times I’ve had to come to the Lord over the years and admit that “i let it slip” and I wonder how I can even try again!!! Made me think of that when I read your post. Blessings ~S
Analogy is the word I was thinking too. What amazing opportunities to see His intricate creation from the inside out! And what an amazing teacher too.
Our God is all about 2nd chances, willing to embrace the prodigal, strong enough to crush our fears and doubts, but gentle enough to calm and hold our hearts.
Thank you for sharing your God moment stories. ????
This is a beautiful analogy, Katrina. You have touched my heart. I know that sounds like I’m trying to be funny, and maybe I am, a little (why pass up a good opportunity?), but I mean it, too. Thanks for writing this.
This is a new and unique experience to chat with an author! Thank you! My daughter, Elaine, asked for one of your books for her son Truman. I can’t give a book away without reading it. . . I couldn’t finish because it was time to wrap it. But I was hooked! Now I have 2 more grandsons I’m giving Brady Street Boys books to!
I enjoyed your blog: Holding the Heart. That was quite a revelation. One we all need to come to. We need to be willing to be used for His cause and cooperate with Him in the process, not thinking we are the key player. Just humbly serve as the helper. . . So many times we think we can’t do something. And we can’t, of course! But if God brings the idea to our mind and we feel it’s a prod from Him, then we need to step out in faith and be willing to be the hands and feet for His mission.
I would like to explore your thoughts on dysfunctions we encounter and helping the Lord in those circumstances. That strikes a cord with me! Thank you for bringing that out! We just need to be there for others. We all know people with great needs. They need cared for!! Helping them feel accepted despite their struggles may give them the courage to live in victory! God bless you! I will enjoy following your posts!
I so needed to read this. Wow! Love it! So often if we step out of the way and let God He does such a better job then we can even begin to try in our humanness.