Let's suppose that there is a "ceiling" on our love intake--our ability to receive love from others and God--and that raising that ceiling would increase our intake. If this love intake is nutrition for the heart, we would be successfully "feeding our heart." But how?
Dr. Fred Luskin is the director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project. He writes in this month's Guideposts magazine that "forgiveness is a skill you can develop and practice like any other" and is "a choice to heal yourself." We know eating well is a skill that we can develop and practice and is, truly, a choice to heal our bodies (or not!). Similarly, some of the heart's best nutrition may be targeting those feelings of resentment and unforgiveness and replacing the space they occupy in our hearts with Dr. Luskin's steps to understanding and accomplishing forgiveness. The action is up to us, not the person who offended us.
It would be ridiculous to eat a huge amount of candy and hope our bodies converted it into the nutritional value of broccoli. So why, as Dr. Luskin writes, do we hold onto resentment that is like poison to our bodies and hope the other person will die?
The first step to truly feeding our heart is to take responsibility for what we find there, what we discard, and what we feed it into the future. If the tradeoff for doing the hard work of feeding our heart is receiving more love from others and God-raising that ceiling of love intake--exactly what are we waiting for?
Are you eating any poison?
