40th Anniversary Reflections: Melting an Ice-Cold Heart

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26  

Goodbye Jiggers

“Yeah, sounds good,” I silently mouthed to my dad covering the receiver of the phone, too preoccupied with the call he was currently interrupting.  There was a quizzical look and a sigh as he closed my bedroom door, allowing me to finish chatting. “Alrighty then”, having just hung up, “now what was dad saying?”

His “interruption” was to inform me that after 13 years, he was going to put our one and only family dog, Jiggers, to sleep.  My mind suddenly reminisced for a few moments about the night we brought him home for the first time.  He was a little bundle of white puppy poodle fur.  Actually, a toy poodle. Just the right size along with the “no shedding” requirement from our mom. When we arrived at the breeder that evening, it was only him and a little poodle brother left.  His sibling was energetic and quite majestic for a puppy. At least that’s what my 8-year-old brain thought.

But Jiggers was a runt, more long than tall, and had a pinkish nose instead of black.  He was so cute and a bit pathetic.  He just seemed to need us. So, we had a new dog and bequeathed him a name from one of my Little Golden Books. This memory lasted seconds. A few hot tears were squeezed out, and the unpleasant thought quickly put away. I was back to my new big gay life—consumed with my own fabulousness and off to meet my phone call friend.

“Wow, what a heartless reaction to the death of your childhood dog,” you’re probably thinking right about now—what’s up with that?  Well, growing a heart this stoney required years in the making.

C.S. Lewis was Right

I wasn’t always a cold-hearted shrew. In fact, if you watch our old scratchy 8-millimeter home movies, I was quite the happy go-lucky kid. Always smiling and mugging for the camera, running around and jumping off things. But it didn’t take long for all that happy idealistic innocence to be beaten out of me by life. Growing up with gender and sexuality issues left me feeling displaced and lonely. Being bullied and verbally abused became part of my daily routine.  Not surprising that I began constructing a huge wall around my heart. I also made silent vows to myself—"I will never be vulnerable” and “no one will ever see me cry.” By the time we get to my teenage years in those same home movies—it’s a very shutdown, shell of a person on the screen.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

― C.S. Lewis, The 4 Loves pg 169

I think that amply describes how hard my heart had become—unbreakable, impenetrable.

Having left my faith at age 18 just a few years before, I chalked up a whole other list of disappointing and offensive encounters with Christians, adding to the thickening wall. My current focus was making this “gay thing” work out.  But a quick stint in the Denver gay community didn’t do my heart much good either.  It was equally damaging. I was still hiding behind my protective fortress, but now the bullied was becoming the bully. My weapon of choice became my mouth.  Out of a blackening heart, poured sarcasm, catty cutting remarks meant to tear down a person and elevate my own sagging ego. I had become a very cruel person.

The Much-Needed Medicine of Jesus: WGA

Just like the good shepherd leaves the 99 to look for the one lost sheep—Jesus rescued me back to Himself.  A few months later I attended my first Thursday night meeting at Where Grace Abounds. I was eager to learn more about what the Bible had to say about sexuality. The only thing which felt uncomfortable initially, was this “talking in small group” business. After a short teaching, we split into groups of 5 or 6 and were encouraged to share openly and authentically.  Hmmm, this seems to be poking on all my “big, thick wall” vow.

After coming to group for a while and doing some discipleship counseling with a few Staff members—this more vulnerable sharing was getting slightly easier.  But I did notice something rather alarming.  “I thought coming to this group was supposed to help me feel better and find some resolution—it feels worse,” was my frequent complaint.  Duh? Of course, I repressed negative emotions, pushed wounds down and used addiction to numb a broken heart for decades.  God was doing a deeper work—softening a steely composure and making me finally face some painful realities—how else would you feel?

One Saturday morning after having been at WGA for a year or so, of all things—Jiggers came to mind. A simple memory suddenly turned into waves of messy, snot-filled tears of grief.  All my selfishness, rejection, wounds, horrible choices and self-hatred came roaring to the forefront. It had been about 5 years since dad interrupted that phone conversation. Apparently, grief doesn’t just simply go away.  It will patiently wait to be felt and processed. I spent the rest of my Saturday thinking and praying about a lot.  I know it wasn’t all about Jiggers that fateful morning, but the Lord sure did find the right catalyst.

So, some friends after reading this might think—“This is what a softened heart looks like?”  Yes, the self-protective mean-spirited shrew still makes a guest appearance on occasion.  Way more than I’d like sometimes.  But I know God has done a lot to make my heart of stone into a heart of flesh.  The only way to give and receive love is through vulnerability, as He demonstrated on the cross. So difficult to do sometime. Yet, He’s faithfully continuing this work in progress even 40 years later—Thank God.

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