‘Trust your heart’, but what about when you can’t?

There are all kinds of situations where we would want things different.  The ability, maybe, to do something that we just can’t.  Your heart or instinct is either indifferent or against a proposed form of action.

Sometimes it’s others who expect us to do more or be more or to trust them — but we can’t.  When we trust that instinct, often we can discover why our gut says no.  Yet, sometimes knowing why we feel uncomfortable can be elusive.

Other times it’s somehow the case we feel God’s saying to do something, yet we can’t.  On these occasions, it’s usually helpful to inquire if we think God is expecting something of us or not.  Too often we imagine God being directive and insistent, but apart from desiring us to do what’s right, God truly isn’t insistent at all — particularly in terms of the direction of our lives.  We might go any number of 3 or 4 ways and that would okay with God.

Then there are times when we desire to do something, but we can’t.  It’s like our heart won’t free us to do what we’d like to do.  What is frustrating only becomes more frustrating when we insist upon pushing it.

And finally, there are situations when we honestly don’t know what to do, but we feel under pressure to make a decision — to truth our heart, but we don’t know what our heart would want.

Whichever way we look at it, going against our heart is fraught with all sorts of difficulty.

People should avoid putting pressure on others to ‘trust their hearts’, simply because people don’t respond positively to that kind of pressure.  We find it easier to trust our heart when we feel strongly about what we could or ought to do.

But as soon as someone tries to coerce us by saying, “Go on, just trust your heart,” and when we know they just want us to go their way, our hackles rise and ‘trusting our heart’ — whatever way of deciding — can become incredibly hard.

Manipulation, coercion, even intimidation only has the effect of shoving us deeper into a corner.

Reminds me of the movie, Dirty Dancing: “Nobody puts Baby in a Corner.”  Thankfully we live in an age where resistance to coercion is cultural, whereas it wasn’t so much fifty years ago.  Manipulation always meets some form of resistance.

It’s completely unreasonable when those who manipulate people or situations expect everyone to just accept it.  Those who do manipulate expect that there’ll be no resistance.  This is a double manipulation, or a more constant manipulation by those who engage in it.  This in itself can be a huge reason why we find it impossible to trust our heart.  When your vulnerability opened you up to be abused, you’re less willing to be vulnerable again.

The main thing about decision-making is to trust our heart, and if there’s resistance — whether we discern why or not — THAT’S the heart to trust.

It may not be comfortable or convenient, but more important than convenience or comfort is going with your gut, and especially so when we reason that instinct out, and then we can be thankful that our sense led us in wisdom.

Trusting our hearts can be as hard as opening our hearts in vulnerability.  The best we can do is accept our reality even as we work with the situation.

Photo by Joakim Honkasalo on Unsplash