Open the Door to Your Heart

Once upon a time, little girls dreamed about finding their prince charming.  They watched fairy tales and heard about the princess finally finding her true love.  The tale had a love story that captured the heart of every woman.  She longed to be that princess who fell in love and hoped that she too would also find that prince charming.

You might ask, “What happened to that girl?  That used to be me, but somehow, it all slipped away.  Somewhere along the way, we lose touch with our dreams, and more importantly, our hearts.  We settle for less than we dreamed.  We used to wait for prince charming to come our way, but we settle for the frog.   Our society tells us that prince charming doesn’t exist.  It tells us that we are not good enough.  It tells us that marriages don’t last, or nothing is perfect.  A world filled with broken marriages and hearts broken turns this fairy tale into an old wise tale.  

The problem with the fairy tale not existing anymore is that our hearts begin to harden.  Our hearts are the core of our very self.  It tells us when we are happy, hurt, or mad.  When we stop listening to our heart, we stop listening to ourselves.  We become like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz who says, “If I only had a heart.” Little did we know at the beginning of that movie, Scarecrow already had a heart, he just didn’t know it.  There’s only a little bit of time before we are the scarecrow wondering, what happened to my heart?

It doesn’t take much to make the heart beat again.  It’s seeing that old couple walk by.  They hold hands as if they were back in the high school hallways when they first fell in love.  Or it’s watching a cheesy girly movie where the girl and guy finally get together at the end of the story after much missed opportunities and conflict in the plot.  Or it’s looking through your parents’ wedding pictures and seeing how in love they once were.  My favorite memory was listening to my grandmother’s stories about how much my grandfather loved her.  She’d say, “He loved me so much, he didn’t want me to lift a finger.  He even washed my socks in the sink for me.”  When we see or hear love stories, our hearts skip a beat for minute and we feel that thing, once called a heart, comes alive again.  But, all too soon, our minds take over and tell us the lie, “But it’s only a fairy tale.”

How many times do we fall into this?  How many days have passed by without you listening to your heart?  Whether it’s 1 day, 6 months or 10 years, you can still find your heart again.  There may have been a break up or a story you heard that lied to your heart that told you, “It’s just not going to happen for you.”  I’m here to tell you it can.  Just like the fairy tales say, “Don’t stop believing.”  

As we look to the movies or books and see that each one has some climax in the story, we can look to our lives and realize ours does as well.  There may be struggles along the way, but we have to get through the struggle to get to our dream.  Dreams are worth fighting for.  They are what we are made for.  Sometimes, the hardest thing is fighting for what we want.  We tend to give up too easy, thinking it’s out of our reach.  Little do we know, it’s when we are just about to give up, our dream is waiting for us around the corner.  We just needed to hold on a little longer.

Life is too short to let it pass by.  Each moment in time is a gift that we need to cherish.  If we stop cherishing the moments, we stop living life.  What do you want your life filled with?  Do you want it filled with a fairy tale that you once believed would come true?  Then, don’t stop dreaming and believing that it could happen to you.  Let your heart awaken again and give it a chance to love.  It may be wounded and scared, but remind it that its’ happiness lies in love, and though there may be a chance it could hurt again, tell your heart to rest assured knowing that only wounded hearts love the most.  

Don’t be afraid to start today.  Your heart is waiting for you to open its’ door again.  Go deep inside and see what’s there. You’ll be surprised to see that little girl is waiting at the door of your heart saying, “I thought you would never come back because you stopped coming to me,”  She’ll then open the door and welcome you with open arms and invite you inside your heart.  It’ll be like you never left.  And there, just there, you will find what you have always been looking for…your dreams that will lead to a love that never fails.  A love that never stops beating.  A love that takes a breath every second of the day.  And, you will say, “I can’t believe I ignored you for so long,”  But that’s the great thing about being a heart, it forgets the wrongs and is just happy to have you back. It just loves to be loved.  

There’s not much difference between us and our hearts.  We just want to be loved and we can’t give up until we have found that love.  So, take some time and look into your heart.  What do you want?  What desires are still there?  You may find that the fairy tale is still there.  This time, tell your heart a different story, “Dreams really do come true, just hold on and wait and see.”