Hearts That Look Like the Aurora Borealis

For a long time now, I've been wrestling with how to live from my heart. My tendency is to move into the more safe, less vulnerable place of my head, my refuge, although often a dysfunctional one, where I feel a sense of control and order. I naturally want to set up a permanent residence there because who knows what my heart is going to ask me to do--take risks, love when people might not love me back, live spontaneously, live unafraid like a creative, fun loving, no-holds-bar child? That is enough to freak a person right out! But my heart is not satisfied with the way things are, and it paws at the gate like a wild bull before it's released from the stall, hungering for freedom. It's fed up with living caged. It's true to say my heart is messy, gritty, unpredictable, prone to sudden changes in weather patterns, a borderless wildcard so far removed from structure and logic it feels like a foreign land. But it is also the place where creativity thrives, joy breaks out, love expands and thrives. It is the place of miracles, and it is not of this world. By living from the heart, we become who we were always meant to be before structure took it's heel and crushed us into the ground. If you want to know what living from the heart looks like, watch a child play and create before they enter their school years, before people start to tell them to colour in the lines and act like everyone else.

The other night, I asked God what my heart would look like if it busted out of the fences that have I have erected around it. I felt like he smiled a big fatherly smile and said, "Well, perhaps like the Aurora Borealis." Tears began to form as I thought about the faded colours turning into a stunning light show, radiating the love of heaven all over the world. What would it be like to have a heart that reflected so much love and light that darkness could not exist in its path? What would it be like to fully understand that our hearts have been woven together and carefully crafted by God, who is love? Perfect love. To live there would cause a seismic shift in the world.

Everywhere I go, I see adult colouring books, as if God is inviting the world to live childlike in full technicolour. How great it would be if every one of us experienced the release of the Aurora Borealis in our hearts. At that moment, we would be living as our authentic selves.