A heart enlargement

Now I am finding my life starting to expand in many ways. But I find its my heart that had to be enlarged first.

I was waiting for everything else outside to expand and my outside world to get bigger, but it was my interior world that had to grow first. To have this wide open spacious life, must we not first look to making our inner man enlarged. Yes, because once our heart is enlarged, we are seeing and experiencing everything in a wider capacity. Our heart is the inner chamber to our desires, fears, thoughts, emotions. It is a key to our lives expanding. And though it is such a small member, it is HUGE and plays a major part in whether our life will go from strength to strength or diminish. After all proverbs reminds us, no - admonishes us, even dare I say warns us to " guard our hearts ABOVE ALL ELSE, for out of it flows ALL THE ISSUES OF LIFE. ". An unguarded heart is like a city which lies unprotected, unwalled. It is vulnerable and an easy target.
My heart was in need of repair. My fortress had been shot at, I had let my guard down. So many arrows had made a dent.

How did i know my heart was hurting? Because what was coming out of my ' spring' was not good. A negative comment here, a cynical remark there, a put down and some criticism on the side. My heart was not well. I did not like what I had become inwardly. Now instead of my world getting larger, it was growing horribly smaller, even to the point of no space to breath.
I had thought it was because of my surroundings. You know, living in a small townhouse with 5 children, a husband and two guinea pigs. No yard except a communal road outside. Neighbors drinking, quarrelling and knowing too much about everyone's business, was becoming suffocating. So I did what I thought would be best. I complained, I allowed poison to roll off my lips. I became entwined with bitterness, that a root actually clutched itself to the tendons of my heart. If only my surroundings would change then I could be happy, if only....waiting for outward shifts while my inward heart was slowly making its own toxic changes.

Soil that was being invaded by the wrong seeds.
Many sorrowful nights and nights of waiting for change. Until I realized I could be the one to make the change! I could be the change I want to see. My life already was wide open and spacious, I was the one making it small. Just as the apostle Paul pleaded with the Corinthian church that it was not him who made their life small, it was them, if only they would open their hearts and live openly and expansively.

My life began when I started to look to the inner heart to be enlarged then my whole world was about to be enlarged......