Heart and balls

Dear God

I don’t ever want to question you, you know because you are the supreme creator of the expansive universe, the great designer of all things, but are you sure you made my heart big enough???                     

I first noticed it’s inadequacy the moment Lani was born. As I held my first born in my arms for the first time. I was expecting joy, I was expecting love but I wasn’t expected to be thwacked in the chest by an indescribable emotion that I had never even imagined existed. I bet all you mothers out there are thinking, oh she means that fear thing and to be truthful that sudden realisation that I was now responsible for an other persons life, comfort, guidance, wellbeing, development……did cause a sudden swarm of butterflies to take up permanent residence in my chest cavity. But that’s not the one I’m going for right now. No the emotion was love, I’m pretty sure of that but love on a frequency my body was not equipped to deal with. It was like this love caused an excitement and the excitement took on a physical form and rushed as a hot throbbing liquid through my veins. My heart used to the mundane task of pumping the gentle flow of blood around my body ached with the exertion of dealing with this new substance. My heart actually hurt.

I guess the heart being a muscle is bound by the same physical rules that all the other muscles in our bodies are. When we have a an injury or spend a little bit too much time watching re-runs of How I Met Your Mother instead of taking that poor neglected dog for a walk (Sorry Jonas I promise walkies soon boy) our muscles shorten and don’t perform as well as they should. I am finding out from listening the the physio that Dad is going through after his hip operation that to stretch out the muscle again you actually need to be pushing it till it tears. The muscle fibres will grow between the two edges of the tear lengthening the muscle, if you don’t stretch it till it starts to tear, if there is no pain then the stretch isn’t working. So I guess it’s the same with the heart, if we shelter it, give it only the attention that it knows and has become accustoming to it will carry on but if if we expect something more of it, if we stretch it, well, then we really feel it.

We all have the capacity to love so much more than we do. I know this to be true because I could honestly say to Glenn that I loved him with every molecule of my existence, then when each child came along I was able to love them too. My heart had been stretched, it had bridged the gaps and wrapped it’s self around all of them. And each time it did I felt the same hot fluttery pain that I felt tonight. Tonight may not seem all that special it was just a moment, a moment in time where Glenn and the kids were throwing a ball to each other and I watched. But watching them shriek with excitement as the ball flew towards them, watching them beg Daddy to throw it higher and higher, watching them patiently teach Sabi to keep her hands stretched out and together, watching them all cheer when her pudgy little hands closed around the ball and her feet dance the happy dance, watching all those smiles brought back that old familiar ache and I know my heart has grown a little tonight.

I think these moments are good for the soul. Those precious split seconds were the world is just such an over whelmingly beautiful place to live in that it hurts. I think we need to look for these moments and grow our hearts in them. Maybe that is the Masters plan, that the size we start with doesn’t have to be the size we end with.