“I’ll Take it, If You Will Give it to Me”

The Only Gift We Have to Offer Christ: Our Heart

 

           It was late summer, many years ago, when I woke from a life-changing dream and immediately wrote down the details of what I had seen and been taught.  It had been a time of  sorrow and anxiety in my life. Though I have often heard statements like “what other people think of me is none of my business” I still struggled with the pain associated with learning that people I loved and had trusted had betrayed that trust in ways that were personally and professionally damaging. In my emotional distress I turned often to my Heavenly Father for peace,  comfort,  and strength. 

            I WAS comforted by His directions and words to me,  but I could not escape the ongoing pain of relationships gone amiss.  In my heart I felt that those breaches of trust and love COULD be overcome,  but despite all my efforts to both forgive and repent, people remained people,  misunderstandings and miscommunication still held more sway than truth and compassion,  and I had to accept that sometimes our best efforts are simply not enough to heal the wounds that life brings to us. 

 

           That Sunday morning my Primary children shared their program in our Sacrament Meeting.  It was beautiful.  The Spirit was present so strongly, particularly when two youth who had recently graduated from the children’s class each bore their testimonies.  They were rich, beautiful, and real in their simplicity.  I was grateful to have been able to play some small role in helping them find and share their testimonies.

            The rest of the day went as it usually did; we went to the farm, searched for a missing animal, fed chickens, etc.  When I lay down to sleep that night I was exhausted, grateful for the Spirit of the Lord,  but disheartened by continuing acrimony in relationships that were important to me.

            William tossed and turned most of that night, so I tossed and turned most of the night alongside him.  And then,  towards morning, I settled into sleep and I dreamed.  It was more vision than dream, and similar to other spiritual experiences I’ve had. A dream where I was completely aware of myself and what I was doing, and where even now,  over a decade later, the details and messages remain clear and bright.       

 

            In my dream I walked in mid-Summer towards a house on a hill.  The grass was green and the air was warm.  I could hear the rustle of the leaves in the trees I walked beneath and smelled warm earth and hay drying in the fields around me.

            The scene was beautiful to me, but despite the bucolic image it presented to me there was a sense of trepidation as I walked toward the house. As I approached the door I knew I needed to go inside, but I was afraid to go in, a foreboding sense filled my body as I turned the doorknob and I felt concern for what I might see.  I walked into the home, and in the very center of the room, lying on the floor, was one of my dearest friends. 

            I knelt down beside her to check for a pulse,  but even before I touched her I knew that she was dead.

            There was a rope tied around her neck, purple bruising radiating out from it, a chair on its side near her feet and her legs and arms were splayed at strange angles.  It was obvious that she had hung herself.

            She was beautiful in spite of the bruising,  her face much younger than the last time I had seen her.  All around the room were pictures of her husband, children and family.  The frames and glass had been shattered and broken; they hung at odd angles or were on the floor.  On the table beside her was a note.  She had written that she could no longer bear the pain she felt in her life. She loved her family, but she believed she couldn’t live with the pain of feeling she was never enough.

            The heartache and pain of finding her like that was staggering, like a deep wound in my own heart.  I could hardly breathe for the sense of loss her death meant in my life. Memories of our friendship wound through my years like beautiful threads.  I knew in my heart that I needed to tell her husband what had happened and why, that he couldn’t find her like that, it would be too painful for him. He was my friend too, they both had been. 

            I walked out of the house and saw him in the barnyard.  I went to him and told him what had happened, what his wife had done, and I related the contents of the note as compassionately as I could.  He listened,  and when I finished speaking he was furious with me.  He stormed around, yelled, shook his fists and fingers at me and did everything he could to shift the blame to me for her death.  As I listened to him, as I felt the sharp pain in my heart from the words he spoke to me I could tell that at the core of his actions was a terrible sorrow for what he had lost.  He stalked away from me out into the field and I watched him go feeling such sorrow that I had had to be the one to tell him. 

           

            In an instant I was whisked away to a quiet, gray, almost “empty” kind of place.  There was a filtered light that permeated what seemed to be a cloud or fog that surrounded me.  I stood there in a long white dress, though because of the dim light it didn’t seem very white.  My hair was pulled up into a double twist like I used to wear when William and I were first married.  My hands were cupped in front of me and in them I held my heart.

            It was not simply a representation of my heart; it was the actual muscle and shape of my heart with the aorta, veins and arteries attached.  It wasn’t bloody, it was just the muscle, but I could see that it was terribly bruised.  There were several places where it looked as if it had been pierced and the blood had pooled under the thin membrane that surrounded it, much the same as it does on a deer or other animal that has been shot.

            I held it in front of me and was shocked by the weight of it, by how difficult it was to hold onto my heart.  The weight was so tremendous that I wanted to put it down, but as I stood there I knew I needed to hold onto it.

           

            All at once I found myself again standing under a beautiful,  blue blue sky, though this time I was in the middle of a shrub filled field.  Directly in front of me and up a slight hill I could see a large oak spreading its branches against the sky.  I began to walk towards it, picking my way through the roots, rocks, and red earth.  When I cleared the last of the shrubs and cedars that ringed themselves around the oak tree, I saw my friend’s husband, the one who had yelled at me in a barnyard just moments ago, lying underneath it.  Even before I drew closer I was fearful of what I already knew I would find.

            He was lying face down on the dusty ground, a gun near his right hand and a picture of himself, his wife, and their children in his other, clutched under his breast.  I felt for a pulse at his neck but he was dead.  I could see no blood, but he was cold and stiff when I bent to touch him.  The pain of finding him was agonizing. When I stood up, I saw that his parent’s home had appeared on the horizon to my East. I felt horrified because I knew that they had to be told, and that I would need to find a way to tell them.  I walked slowly to their front door and into their living room.

            They were sitting in the front room and after a few moments of silence I tried as best I could to tell them what had happened to their daughter-in-law,  about her death and then about their son, his death,  and how sorrow, anger, and guilt had driven both to self-destruction. I tried to offer them as much comfort and hope as I could.  I reached out to them to offer my love, to try to ease their pain, but they rebuffed me and turned into each other and the pain they shared.  They turned their backs to me and walked back to their bedroom, away from me.

           

           Once again I was whisked away to the quiet, gray, foggy place where I stood again with my heart in my hands.  This time my heart was swollen and purple as well as bruised.  There was hardly any normal tissue or muscle left on my heart at all. There was only bruising, mucous, and coagulated blood from where it seemed to have been pierced again and again.  It was so heavy that my arms ached from holding it and my breathing was labored.  Oh how I wanted to set it down, even for just a moment, but I knew that I could not.

           

           I was quickly moved again and found myself standing once more on the steps leading up to my friend’s parent’s door. Nowhere I had been brought to so far had been peaceful,  so I was absolutely horror struck by what I might see. Based on what I had already seen before, I expected more evidence of self-destruction.  I opened the door and stepped into the front room.  The house was in a state of disarray. I walked through the kitchen, through the dimly lit hallway, and into a back bedroom where I saw my friend’s mother sitting in a chair.  She was slumped over to one side, an empty bottle of pain medications held loosely in her hand, and other empty bottles scattered around her side table.

            I touched her hand to try and rouse her, but it was too late.  She was already cold in death and I could feel my heart breaking from the pain of it.  I knew I needed to find her husband, to try to ease some of the pain before he found her, knowing full well that he had already experienced the pain that had driven her to suicide and that now there would be no companion to help shoulder the burden of it.  I found him in the kitchen as I walked back through the hallway.  He didn’t doubt what I had told him, he didn’t go to check for himself.  He simply stared right through me, almost as if he couldn’t hear me then turned and walked outside.  I began to weep as I stood in the empty kitchen.

           

            For the last time I found myself in the silent, gray stillness.  Tears were still coursing down my cheeks as I looked at the heart in my cupped hands.  This time it didn’t look like a heart at all.  It was charred and blackened, as if it had been burned.  There seemed to be nothing left of the heart I had started out with.  The weight of it was so much more than my body was able to bear.  My arms and legs shook.  My back ached from the weight and I knew that I hadn’t the strength to hold it much longer, but I knew I mustn’t put it down or drop it.  All I could think of was surviving from one second to the next under the staggering weight of my destroyed heart. 

            As I stood there in the near dark I could think of nothing but how much I needed help.  I was so overcome with the labor of holding my heart that I couldn’t speak above a whisper when I prayed “Please Father, please.  This is too heavy, I cannot bear it.  Please Father, please take it from me.”  Each breath I took rasped in my lungs, my body shook, and on each exhale I begged “Please.”

            As I stood weeping, holding on in the silence, I saw a figure walking towards me.  As he walked purposefully toward me I recognized him.  It was my Savior, Jesus Christ.

            He was dressed in a red robe, the color of bricks or dried blood, and it was tied with a simple fiber rope around His waist.  His eyes were so kind and so full of patience and compassion.  There was no pride and no shame in standing before Him. I knew that He knew every bit of my heart and loved me in spite of its horrible condition.  The tears flowed down my cheeks and He brought his hands forward and cupped them under mine without touching them and simply waited.

            “Please, “ I said, my voice shaking. “Please, it hurts to carry it.”

            I have no way to describe the absolute compassion on His face, but I finally knew that he KNEW how much I hurt, how deep the pain went into my soul, and He said to me “I’ll take it if you will give it to me.”

            I looked at the understanding in His eyes and then looked down at my blackened, charred, bruised and heavy heart.  Suddenly, though the pain was unbearable, my dismay increased when I realized with horror that my heart, my burnt and wounded heart was the only thing I had to give Him.  I wanted to give Him something beautiful, I wanted to take all my knowledge, all my talents and gifts and give Him something worthy of his majesty and glory, to thank Him for all He had done.  For a moment I couldn’t bear the thought of knowing that all I had was this destroyed and broken heart to give Him.

            I looked at Him with the horror of my pitiful gift obvious in my face, I couldn’t put it into words but He knew my thoughts and He smiled just a little in great kindness and said again “I’ll take it, if you will give it to me.”

            I looked down at his hands, waiting to receive my heart and it struck me that as horrible as my heart was, it was all I had to give Him, it was the only real gift I had to give,  and He was waiting for me.

            I sobbed as I drew in a deep breath, set my heart into His hands, and felt the weight of it slide away from my body as He cradled it gently.  He smiled at me with a look of absolute triumph and then we both looked down at my heart as it began to change in His hands.

            Water, pure, bright and clean fountained up from the wounds in the palms of His hands and began to bathe my heart.  The dark, burnt parts washed away and dripped to the ground, the purple mucous and the bruising washed away.  The water washed and washed until what was left in His hands was a pure heart, made of the finest crystal, and shining brightly with a light that glowed from inside of it.

           I looked up at him in wonder and He spoke to me again as He held my heart, His voice so filled with gratitude that I was shocked and could hardly comprehend it.  He simply said “It’s mine now.”  

 

          The joy of that statement washed through my soul just as the water had washed through my heart.  All of the pain left me, all of the disillusionment and hurt was erased, and all I could feel was the joy of His salvation and the desire to share it.  The first thought in my mind was that I couldn’t wait to tell my friends of the healing I had found.  He smiled and nodded to me and I ran from the gray place, back to the home where my dream had begun, though in some ways it was now completely different.  I knew as I burst through the front door that I would find my friend alive and well.  When I rushed in I found her smiling and we held onto each other, weeping and overcome with the joy and love that the Savior has for us.

            As I began to wake up I worried that I had not yet found my other friends, but I knew that I could. 

           

           As I have pondered this dream and brought back to my mind the love, compassion, and joy I felt in the presence of the Lord, I am beginning to understand that when the Lord asks us for an offering of a broken heart and a contrite spirit He is asking us to recognize our need for His salvation and be willing to let Him heal our broken hearts.

         I don’t know why I hadn’t really understood that before.  I thought I understood the concept of a humble and contrite heart, and I had learned as a young woman in several Sunday school classes that a broken heart meant to remove from ourselves the things of the world.  But what I experienced in that dream was so much more powerful than theory, or definitions.  I have never before known such a need as I experienced in that dream.  I could finally comprehend on a primal level, what having a contrite heart entails.  I simply could not endure the pain anymore, I knew that my strength was gone, but that I needed to hold on to survive; but even in that knowledge I nearly considered not giving Him my heart because of my pride.  I wanted to give him something better than my heart, something beautiful and worthy of Him.  I wanted him to see what I had done and be proud of me and my attempted perfection.  It was humbling to stand before Him and realize that my need and pain, my hurt and hopelessness was not caused by any tremendous sin, but simply by experiencing mortality.  That no matter how hard I tried, there would still be hurts that only He could heal, and that I needed to set my pride aside to accept His love and grace.  By giving him my heart, as broken as it was, He was able to heal, fill, and change it into something I could never have comprehended.  Life broke my heart, things beyond my power to change broke my heart, my heart simply WAS broken; I didn’t have to do anything to it to break it for Him.  I just needed to be humble, to be contrite, and understand that I needed Him.  That His atonement was not given to me based on my spiritual earnings, but rather because of His love for me.  He was triumphant and grateful in claiming the gift of my heart and I was filled with love and hope in His Atonement.  

           It has kindled in me a desire to do more good, to serve more, to love more, and to comfort the weary and the weak.  To see what He was able to do with a heart as battered as mine was, to purify and beautify it into something far greater than anything I could have made has made me want to strive always to give my heart to the Lord.

            How wondrous is the love He has for us.  I am still overcome at times when I just sit and ponder the weight of the pain He bore for me.  When I am plagued by the pain of some relationships that are still in turmoil, I am able to hear His words “I will take it if you will give it to me.”  And I can let the pain pass over me and feel the love that He would have me feel and share instead.  When my heart struggles with the urge to hold onto grudges and allow wounds to fester, that quiet, powerful voice of compassion and kindness reminds me that we all struggle with pain that others cannot see and to repay hurt feelings with tenderness.

            Grateful seems like such a small word to describe the way I feel about the gift of the Atonement.  Awestruck is a better term.  If I spend the rest of my days in His service, if I wear out my life in doing His work, it will still fall short of what I want to give Him; the gift of my life, which I want to turn over to Him when I reach my last page and see Him again.

            Every day I am learning to see that service is in the small things, that great love is often in the little acts of kindness between a husband and wife, a parent to a child, and from a friend to a friend.  It is the countless, tiny things that are becoming the work I most want to pursue.  I am finding that I want to seek the Spirit more and more in my daily routine, and try to follow through with speed and exactness when I feel a prompting to call a friend, or write a note, or spend a few moments with my children.   Some days it seems daunting, and I don’t even know why because I am so grateful for my life and the path my family is on, but I remember again that help comes to me when I feel helpless if I can just keep holding on.

 

         This Christmas,  as I sit here amidst the warmth of family love, the leftover papers that wrapped our presents to one another,  and the sounds of music and conversations,  I have been thinking of that moment in this dream,  that moment when I willingly gave my heart to the Son of God. It wasn’t pity on his face. It wasn’t mockery. It was triumphant gratitude.  It was how I imagine my face looks when I finally accomplish something that I have been working a very,  very long time on. My heart wasn’t an afterthought to Him. He truly WANTED it. I thought my gift was horrible.  I thought my pain meant failure.  I thought my heartbreak meant sin.  But He wanted my heartbreak.  He wanted to turn it into something beautiful. It was a powerful, life-altering truth to learn. The only true gift I can give to the Savior is my willingness to let him heal me. 

 

           It is a good truth to revisit.  In a world where many things can break our hearts, where words can tear gashes in our souls,  and loneliness can eat away at our joy until we’ve forgotten what it feels like, it is a precious thing to believe that we have a loving friend who desires to heal us. A friend who wants to rekindle our hope and wash away the weight of grief from our hearts. He wants to carry the pain in our heart, but we have to be willing to give it to him.

           I hope,  no matter what shape your heart is in this Christmas, that you will consider offering it to Jesus Christ. I know that He will be gentle with it and that it will be very loved in His hands.