Guard your heart?

King Solomon said it best “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” (Proverbs 4:23).

We take that verse lightly without really thinking about it in our day to day life outside our spiritual lives. LOL do not worry this is not a theology class or a Sunday sermon.

When it comes to relationships, both platonic and romantic, they tell you to guard your heart, but they don’t tell you how.They tell you to guard your heart, but they don’t tell you why. Basically, most of us tend to emphasize on that phrase but in reality we do not to guard our own hearts.

So how and why do you guard your heart?

Guarding your heart means protecting the deepest parts of who you are (both your emotional and spiritual worlds) from anyone who could cause them harm.

Some people can be insensitive and uncaring. It is important to always keep that in mind whenever you want to let someone in your life. Do not just trust everyone and always take time to know them before being emotionally intimate with them. Do not just tell them your life story, be alert at all times, always keep in mind that no one in this world has your back apart from. It is always going to be about you at the end of the day.

It is very important to wait, it’s also important to do so until the timing is right, until you have clarified your commitment, established trust, and experienced give-and-take in your dating relationship and friendships. Don’t go too deep too fast, because emotional intimacy can pull you far deeper into your relationship than you ever meant to go and, in the end, leave you with the double damage of a broken heart and a broken spirit.

You can guard your heart through guarding your conversations because it is so tempting to talk about the future when you’re dating. You want to dream together, to envision the future and create a life to live for. While it’s important to be on the same page in a relationship, personally, I have been in a situation where me and my then partner jumped into these kinds of conversations way too fast, without really keeping in mind the importance of building a foundation of commitment and trust before anything else. It is really hard to commit to matters of the future while not committing to the present ones.

Also, you can guard your heart through guarding your mind because our thoughts about dating can have a tremendous impact on our emotional world, per Romans 12:2, 'Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind........' Basically, we should try to keep our minds focused on what is good.

Lastly, guard your heart through guarding your time because if you spend unhealthy amount of time with people, or even your partner, it can lead to attachments and we know attachments suck the living fuck out of you. Set a quality time for your relationship (but keep in mind, when you enter a relationship you are not meant to lose yourself), your spiritual life(you should be able to open and understand your spiritual dimension, that way you will be able to get the right direction to things), your friends and relatives, and most importantly, do not forget to set time for yourself as well because remember at the end of the day its going to be you and you alone. No one got you like you in this world the way you got yourself.

To understand why you got to guard your heart, you need to take time being single and understand yourself, get to know more about yourself, you need to be at an equilibrium state, away from all the chaos in life to understand this.

Most people treat the idea of guarding your heart as if it merely involves protecting yourself from too much intimacy with someone of the opposite sex. But guarding your heart is so much more than this! It’s a call to protect your character in all that you do. Unless you catch this kind of vision for why you need to guard your heart, it will remain a minimalistic adventure in your life.

Your emotional dimension is one of your most intimate parts, so don’t allow it to be compromised. Healthy relationships call for an accurate understanding of your emotional character. Protect yourself by guarding your heart, your mind, your time, and your conversation. Take control of your relationship; otherwise, it will take control of you.