Sometimes we can feel like we’re stuck, we hurt, and we just don’t how to pick ourselves up and move forwards. We can feel helpless, frozen. Have you ever felt like that? When we look to see what lies behind our ‘stuckness’, we may discover that our heart has turned hard.

I remember once having a conversation with my sister and brother-in-law in the garden at the end of a lovely summer’s day. My sister asked me why I had not shared with her the challenges that I had been facing in my marriage. She would like to have been there for me. In that moment, I saw that pride had stopped me from being vulnerable and sharing that all was not well.  I saw that my heart had turned hard. Not easy to swallow, I cried, it was the truth. I had built a dam wall around my heart that did not let love in or out.

When our heart is open, we feel calm and loving, at peace; we are compassionate and understanding. We embrace others differences, we accept what is, we accept ourself just as we are.  We understand and allow our feelings to be rather than be at the mercy of them, we appreciate the beauty in everything around us, and we know how to set boundaries. Our focus is on how we can serve.

When we have a hard heart, we can find it challenging to trust, we certainly don’t feel at peace, and we may unconsciously turn our backs on others. A hard heart can come about through insecurity, fear, harsh judgements, through refusing to let go of our pain or repressing the feelings we don’t want to feel.

We don’t need to make heavy work of breaking up the hardness – we don’t need a pick-axe! A hard heart is created for a reason and, once it is no longer significant, we can simply visualise opening it and going beyond it. Of course, it’s important not to judge it. Each day we can then ask ‘what is the opportunity to live from an open heart?’ We can look for small ways to open our heart to others, to show how much we care about them, to connect and join in. To be honest, this is still a work in progress for me.

Is it time to open your heart and let the light within truly shine? To see through your beautiful heart?