How I let it become what it became is unfathomable to me, still. One could blame oneself too easily. Yet, reality is such that we all have allowed it to become something we wish it had not become.
The heart is a fascinating organ. Two days ago, for the first time in my life, I was brought to a patient by my tutor and asked to listen for any abnormalities. One by one, we listened to his heart. "Anything abnormal?" he asked. The students before me shook their head.
Medical students are always told to look, listen and feel to what Normality is, so we can better pick up anything which deviates from the norm. I find the heartbeat such a fascinating phenomena that I find myself listening to my own ever so often.
When it came to my turn, I said, "The second heart sound is too loud. It ought to be much softer, I think."
"You got it," he said. "He has a diastolic heart murmur."
The heart is a fascinating organ. Blood in, blood out. Blood in, blood out. From the moment you are born, it never stops pumping until your last breath of life. The only time it ever rests is when it decides to rest, forever. Blood in, blood out- all of our lives.
For us to live, blood has to flow through our entire beings to supply us with sufficient oxygen. For the heart to survive, blood has to flow through the network of vessels which give it sufficient nutrients. Blood in, blood out- fluent, fluid, smooth like clockwork.
Hospitals in developed countries like Singapore are filled with patients recovering from heart attacks. Our sedentary lifestyles, high-stress environments and rich eating habits all contribute to the accumulation of lipids in our blood vessels. The lipids harden to form a calcified plaque which eventually erupts, blocking off crucial heart vessels. Blood in, blood... no longer out. This results in what we call a myocardial infarct or very simply, a heart attack. Blood in, but blood not out.
But here's what's scary- the lipids which contribute to the eventual heart attack which takes place in the second part of your life starts to accumulate from the day you were born. For decades, you could be eating, laughing, drinking, smoking, living ever so blissfully before that final critical moment where the plaque erupts, and stops the smooth flow of blood.
Pain seizes your chest like a thunderous judgement upon you. Some people feel the crushing pain in their left chest, but more often than not, it spreads like a fire gone wild to your jaw and left arm, paralysing you in agony. You fall to your feet, as if an iron man had given you a startling blow behind your neck. The ambulance comes. They tell you you need an operation and don't ask for your consent because you're in critical condition.
Your system stops working. Every living cell in your body is starving for oxygen. All your cells are dying... you are dying.
We all have evil gunk accumulating in the riverbeds of our bloodstreams. One could easily scoff at another for allowing himself so much indulgence, thinking he was free of it, when in fact, nobody knows how much gunk they really have, when it will erupt, when he himself may find himself on his knees, perspiring furiously, gripping his chest in unbearable pain.
And it occurred to me, all at once one day, why my heart has always been so weak. Some people said it was my sensitivity, or over-compassionate nature. Some said it simply had a genetic component. But it finally came to me one day, that the answer could be all of those, but none as convincing as what I felt God had whispered to me-
- that it was a clog in the system, that made the heart weak, causing a heart attack which nearly killed me. Just as cells are starved of oxygen, Anorexia was a physical manifestation of my emotional starvation, too.
For a normal person to live, Love, oh glorious glorious Love, must pulse through his veins every second. Love in, love out. Love in, love out. In my case, the clog, that hardened plaque, had stoppered the system such that Love kept leaking out like an emotional haemorrhage, without ever receiving an adequate inflow of the life-giving fluid. Love out... out... and out.
I talked to the family therapist, Miss A*, this week. We learnt that the reason why conflicts happen in Big Brick Houses, is because different people have different love languages. There are five love languages- namely Quality time, Words of Affirmation, Gifts, Physical Touch and Acts of Service. Our Love systems flow best when the same love language we give out is poured right back into us. We all speak different love languages- men, more often in the language of physical touch and providing acts of service, and women more often in gifts, which explains why we feel different levels of fuzziness when we receive love in different forms, and also explains why so often, conflicts arise when one does not interpret another's actions as Love, simply because of the different love languages they speak.
It came to me the other day, that the reason why I keep having to go for heart surgery is because of... the clog in my heart system. The clog that stops life-giving blood from flowing through my heart, that stops my heart from pumping oxygen through my body, the clog that stops my love tank from being filled... which makes me afraid to love, even. And it's name is... Unforgiveness.
Love out... out... and out. And the reason why none is flowing in is hardly because of a lack of love around me, but an inability to process the different love language being poured in. I speak the rarest, and possibly the most demanding love language in the world, that is, Quality Time. Very few people speak it and express their love that way. We live in a city which has too much cash and too little time. And so, when they in the Big Brick House express their Love in a different language, in terms of money, provision, expensive gifts and freebies, I find the black black plaque called Unforgiveness, growing in size, insidiously damming up the lovepipes in the heart.
We all have love languages we interpret less well than others. And I don't understand the language from the Big Brick House. I speak in the language of intimate conversation, meaningful time spent together, hugs, genuine words from the heart, sometimes gifts... and a city of bright lights, compressed time and artificial diamonds, most people just don't have time to sit by the beach.
The bloodjet of love leaks out... out... and out. For years. Pain, hurt, incapacitation.
Heart attack.
A bypass surgery is when the doctors put a pipe inside your heart so they can open up the vessel which got dammed by the plaque, allowing life-giving blood to flow through again. So that's where they've got me now, on the operating table, with four, five, six of them cutting me up to fix a heart gone wrong. They don't have anaesthesia in this hospital so the pain can be sometimes excruciating. Believe them when they tell you to take healthy-heart advice, because Unforgiveness is the fastest way to starve your body to death, be it of oxygen or of love.
Do you have a clog in your system too? The heart of the matter is- we all do. Humanitarians, pastors, missionaries, saints even, all have tiny plaques clogging up their hearts. Yet, how we let them become what they do remains unfathomable to us. One cannot forgive once and for all. It takes forgiving, re-forgiving, and re-forgiving each and every single day.
Just like the way God forgives us every single time, over and over, in spite of all our inadequacies, shameful shortcomings and blatant blunders, our sickening sins. Over and over, forgiving and re-forgiving.
Forgiveness- it's the daily bypass which cleanses our system. It's the only way to keep our hearts pumping, to keep the bloodjet streaming, to keep the spirit of Love flowing fluidly inside of us. Indeed, it's the only way we can live.
Forgiveness, that's what the story behind the Cross is about. It was the ultimate act of Love that God showed us. Is that why they say Mister God has a Big, Strong heart? Because there's so much capacity to forgive that absolutely nothing can clog His system?
So perhaps, that's what the Heart of the matter really is- Forgiveness.
Somewhere deep down inside, where you're most afraid to admit or even blissfully ignorant of, do you have a clog, too? And will you make the choice to go for a bypass before it's too late, before it hurts too bad?
Don't wait till it's too late, because remember, no matter how bad they've wronged you, you're the one who'll suffer from the myocardial infarct. But take heart, because God's in the operating theatre. He wears a surgical gown, a White one, too.
Question is, will you let Him?
*All posts under the link Therapy chronicle her journey to recovery from Anorexia and depression with professional help from the team at the Singapore General Hospital.
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