You’re allowed to keep your heart safe

There is a way, despite all the odds, to keep your heart safe. It's not a place. It doesn't have anything to do with something you can buy or acquire or earn.

It's a state of living that you enter into.

Some say that God keeps them safe. There are a heap of scriptures that seem to say the same thing, too.

Like this one:

"The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him."*

(Hedge of protection anybody? #triggered.)

And this one:

"The name of the Lord is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe."*

Annnnd this one:

"The Lord will keep you from all harm - he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore."

Apparently, all you need to do to be safe is to be a Christian. There you go, done. Safe. Protected. Free from harm. Hedged in. Watched over.

Has that been your spiritual experience? Has God kept you safe from heartbreak? Has God kept you safe from financial pressure or trouble? Relationship uncertainty and change and pain? Have the bullies been silenced? Have the illnesses and afflictions and diseases disappeared? Are you immune to viruses and bacteria? Are your loved ones unaffected by suffering? Are you?

Here's another verse for you:

When you're in over your head, I'll be there with you.
When you're in rough waters, you will not go down.
When you're between a rock and a hard place,
it won't be a dead end—
Because I am God, your personal God,
The Holy of Israel, your Savior.*

This is not a verse about God being like Jiminy Cricket, or the Fairy Godmother, or an entity that stays with some and not with others according to their behaviour.

This is about alignment. The Divine path is one of survival and thriving; it's where you go through the water and the flames and the rocky places, and you come out the other side because you trust and believe that you can. The spiritual path is one of resilience.

Nearly every time you read a scripture about God giving someone strength, or being a place of safety and refuge, or being an entity of protection and power, the author was in the thick of life themselves. They were in over their head, surrounded by flames, running from danger, climbing over mountains of impossibility.

Which I might add, is the only way to get through to the other side; you've got to keep going.

There is a degree of safety in never leaving home. But it keeps you small, isolated, and separate from the expansive and divine life you were created for. It's not really safe at all, because it keeps you from becoming all that the waters and fires and mountains will make you.

When you align your spirit and heart with the Divine path, with the way of resilience, with trust and grace and grit and faith, you will live on. You will make it through. Yes, perhaps in ways you never thought, and things may look very different than you imagined on the other side. But if you open your heart, and submit to the grace available to you at every moment, you will rise. And you'll look back at what you thought was extremely precarious and unsafe and risky to see that it made you stronger, wiser, and more beautiful and that you were capable of doing hard things, after all.

That, right there, is the safest place you can be.

(This post is an excerpt from The Practice Co App series called "How To Keep Your Heart Safe", available to download for iOS and Android! It includes daily devotionals, FREE Mindful Prompt notifications (no subscription needed), phone wallpapers and more. Start with a free trial or subscribe to get access to each new series as they come out.)

Mindful Prompt*: There is no such thing as a ruined life. The raw materials for wonder and healing are always at your fingertips, waiting for direction, waiting for you to rise and get to work. As Shane Koyczan said: If your heart is broken, make art with the pieces.

Written by Liz Milani.
Instagram: @thepracticeco