After I picked up A. from preschool this afternoon, my little honey says, “Mom, ya know what?”
Me: “What love?”
A.: “I’ve got a thousand hearts in my heart.”
Me: “That’s lovely, A.”
A.: “Yeah. That means I love everyone. Do you know that? {Pause.} Do you have a ‘thousand hundred’ hearts in yours?”
{I thought about how harsh I was to the other drivers on the road getting to my son’s preschool on time. I thought about how closed off my heart has felt for awhile as I’m often going about my day alone. But his question woke me up — yes, yes there have been many times when my heart has a “thousand hundred” hearts in it. And as I remembered, I could physically feel my heart opening and expanding in that moment looking at my son}
Me: “Oh my Love, some days, some moments, yes, I do. ”
A.: “That’s a nice way to feel, isn’t it, mom?”
Me: {with my heart bursting} “Yes, it is. When we have those feelings of loving everyone and everyone is in our heart. It is a lovely feeling.”
It was one of those moments that we all have when kiddos speak such wisdom that it “rights” our hearts, shifts the ground we walk on, and roots us again in what is important, true, and holy. I drove home with a lighter heart.
He reminded me of a poem I wrote a few years ago. It’s about what can happen when I/we just breathe and allow and open and soften. (Thanks, Hafiz and Thich Nhat Hanh for inspiring me):
Little Did I Know
Little did I know
when I was breathing in and said,
“I am breathing in”
and when I was breathing out
I said, “I am breathing out”
that
my
heart
would
s
o
f
t
e
n
so much so that
each person
became
my beloved.
Lisa A. McCrohan, ©2009
What if we risked opening our hearts? What if we risked vulnerability and loved, allowing our hearts to be as vast as the ocean? I wonder how our world might look different.
Our true nature is compassion. It’s hardwired in us. But when we live in a toxic culture of hurry, worry and busy, we start seeing everyone else as “the other.” We start seeing them as a threat. When we pause and come back home to our true nature, we sense again that we ARE love. We sense our connection to every single living being. We sense our hearts opening and remembering just how vast they are.
Blessings,
This is such a beautiful post – thank you for sharing your sacred moment with us. Our children can deliver wisdom that can stop us in our tracks and is way beyond their Earth Years – we just have to stop and listen 🙂 Little A sounds full of profound wisdom; what a gift but you have stopped to receive and that is a blessing too because I think it’s easy to miss it if we’re caught offguard….
Ahhh Mrs. Green you say it so well – wisdom beyond their years. It just comes out of them. Thank you for your encouragement. I do hope that i am cherishing all these moments as mindfully as i can. it already is going by so fast.
That is beautiful. Reading it opens my heart now.
I love what you have done with the word, “soften”. A beautiful way of emphasizing the word.
Thank you so much. Yes, the word “soften”…one coworker who read this told me that she could feel the word moving through her – down her throat, to her heart and belly as she read the word “soften.” It’s one of my words for the year. And I do feel like I have indeed embraced “softening” more this year than any in the past. It’s quite…delightful.
As Clare said above, reading it has opened my heart to a thousand more.
Daily I think of how terrified I was of motherhood, in contrast to the now-lived truth: it is a blessing filled with a sequence of endless blessings, much like a thousand hearts within one heart.
Deborah, a soft “thank you.” Oh it just delights me, tickles my heart, and expands/opens my heart that someone’s heart opened to a thousand more hearts reading this. I do believe that this is how we change the world. Your blog is awesome. Raw, honest, and real. I look forward to reading more from you!