Guard Your Heart

Guard your heart. I think I have heard this warning about a thousand times just since I started high school. It seems to be the big dating advice that Christians give, outside of don't have sex of course, but for me it was really kind of just empty words that didn't mean much. How was I supposed to "guard my heart"? What did that look like, and why should I even bother? Unfortunately instead of heeding the warning of women who had been there, I decided that I was going to learn the hard way: through experience. Now before I go any further with this, I want to make a few things clear about this topic. For one, I do not have the mind set that all boys are bad, and my intention with sharing this story is not so that girls will decide all men are evil and never trust them or give their heart away. Another thing I want to stress is that girls are not the only ones who have to guard their heart in a relationship. Guys can easily get hurt just as bad and need to listen to this wise, old warning as well. With all that being said, I've had some experience with failing to guard my heart.

I've never been too much of a dater. In all 4 years of high school, I had three boyfriends total and only one of those relationships lasted over 2 months. I didn't see the point in the serial dating cycle that most teenagers find themselves in, and now I'm very thankful for that. I was 15 when I had my first "real" date if that tells you anything about me and dating. I just wasn't really into it, and I was perfectly okay with that. After two very short and relatively painless relationships, I was a senior in high school and very content with finishing out the year single. Although I was happy with the way things were, it seemed that some of the people I was really close to felt I needed a guy in my life. The matching making began, and soon they had found their perfect man for Hannah. I had never considered dating this guy, but I thought he was cute and fun to be around, so I didn't mind when all their scheming paid off and he asked me out on a date. After that, I fell hard. I mean head first, swept off my feet, totally crazy about him kind of fell. I hadn't guarded my heart at all. I thought he had hung the moon and could do no wrong, and he was in college while I was still a senior in high school! What could be better? Well looking back now, I see all the problems with the relationship. I stopped enjoying my last semester of high school and started spending all my time with him. I didn't even go to prom or any of my senior activities. I rushed through those last few months and, to my great pleasure, finally graduated. We had planned for the summer to be filled with spending all kinds of time together out in the sun and doing lots of couple-y things. What we didn't plan for was a summer full of arguing. Looking at it now, I see that all that arguing stemmed from the fact that we just weren't right for each other, but at that time I played it off as some sort of rough patch. I loved this guy like I had never loved anyone before, but little did I know, his feelings for me weren't quite the same. In the end we had a pretty nasty break up where he said a lot of ugly thing that he really didn't mean. He was just trying to make me mad enough to want the break up as much as he did, but what he actually did was completely break my heart and ruin my self esteem.

I tell you this whole story not to make this guy out to be a monster, because he certainly isn't, but to illustrate how important guarding your heart is. If I had done that the relationship could have ended several other ways. I may have seen from the beginning that we weren't good together, or maybe the arguing would have caused me to reevaluate, or maybe we would have mutually agreed that the relationship wasn't healthy. I don't know what would have happened, but I do know it would have saved me a lot of hurt, anger, and bitterness and probably made a good friendship. For me a guarded heart means more than just not getting hurt. It means seeing a relationship clearly for what it is and not wasting time trying to keep a sinking ship afloat. I hope that from my mistake you will learn to be very careful with your heart and only give it to someone who also sees the importance in guarding it.