Surprised by Hardened Soil
In my first post of the new year, I’d love to pose a question: How do you keep your heart from being hardened by circumstances and people?
If you don’t have an answer, I’ll ask another question: Are you currently unaware of the areas your heart has been allowed to become hardened?
Truthfully, I will admit that, about a week ago, I had to first answer the second question for myself. I don’t consider myself a hard-hearted individual. I’m generally willing to dig a little deeper within myself when something feels off and I’m generally optimistic, or at least have an “everything-will-work-out-okay” mindset that can set me on a projection of working hard until it is figured out.
But far too early in 2020, I was hit with a strange realization: My heart had hardened in some very specific areas that I hadn’t even realized; with that hardening had come some unanticipated resentment that I wanted nothing to do with.
As I sat in my home church where I lead worship and listened to a message from the Parable of the Sower—which I have heard and read countless times—I suddenly realized that certain hopes and expectations had been walked over so many times by other circumstances or people or pressing priorities that the ground where I’d initially planted those seeds had been tamped down and hardened.
I’m not even talking about obvious comments or situations. I’m talking about the low-key ones that tread their same ground over and over again and are hard to detect: The subtle disappointments. The feelings of unworthiness.. The lack of deep relational investment.
What comes to mind for your own journey?
Throughout 2018 and 2019, I did a lot of deep soul work that allowed me the freedom and courage to dive in to some big dreams the Lord had put in my heart. I turned the corner into 2020 having accomplished a lot of those big dreams on my list for the year:
Started this website. This had been a dream of mine for a while and it. Was. Hard. [late night] Work…especially being a mama of a very speedy toddler!
Began Fundraising to record my album, In The Open. This was a lot of hard work, and a lot of vulnerable work. Asking for support is incredibly humbling. But what I saw happen was a beautiful community that gradually came around me…and the project is fully funded! Now in 2020 the fun can begin!
Finished more work on our property, house and garden. If you’ve ever lived through major land and home renovations, you and I should high five and give the knowing look that says I know.
Hosted fun events in our barn! This is one of the things we had dreamed of for our home. Engagement parties, creative days, work retreats, harvest parties. There are so many souls who have come to enjoy, find rest and even scream “cheers!” with celebration in our space.
And honestly, I’m so incredibly proud of my life and my family life in 2019. We worked really hard to love each other and to love our home—though it sometimes brought on more frustration than we had anticipated. But amidst the goodness of family, the accomplishments and the celebrations, I was still standing on hardened soil that hadn’t yet loosened its grip on my soul.
Of all the effects that this hardness had on me, the greatest one was having lost sight of truly trusting myself and the Holy Spirit’s life within me. Because of those repeated disappointments and circumstances that seemed to give or take away my value, I’d been training myself to live my life in a way that pleased other people.
Not God. Other people. Sometimes, people that didn’t even have a right to bare an opinion to me about my life.
So there I sat on Sunday, my mind racing through the patterns that had worn on my heart. I suddenly realized, yet again, how tight my soul had become, and how much it needed to be loosened again, to breathe again, and even to celebrate again. It seems the work of a healthy soul is never finished.
And as the Holy Spirit does, he brought out the little plow that begins to till up the ground as we sang “Old things have passed away, but Your love has stayed the same.”
So, I ask again. Are there areas in your heart that you have allowed to remain hardened, simply because it doesn’t seem like a situation or person will ever change? Do you have a way to keep your heart from staying in a hardened place? I know it may feel easier to keep that ground pressed down tightly so that even the weeds can’t burst through. But I also know how much better life is with a heart and soul that can inhale and exhale without restriction.
Let’s continue our beginning to 2020 with great steps toward wholeness.
Cheers and Happy New Year,
Jamie L. Robison