My 1st Open Heart Surgery

It was brought to my attention that I needed to write more often, so I decided that since I have nothing of worth to do at work right now, that I would spend my time in deep thought. I don’t quite know how I can express the greatnesses that have been happening these past several weeks; however I did remember a huge revelatory breakthrough that God gave me which I would like to share with you. Before I begin, I want to inform those who’s eyes happen to stumble upon my writings, that you are privileged individuals. Occasionally I will share God’s words to me with close friends, but I rarely allow my heart to be this exposed to the masses. That being said, please don’t take what you’re about to read as just a good story, but more as something the Lord may want to speak into your own life as well.

The second weekend of January was when we had our ARC kick off. For week’s maybe even months before, God had been working on my heart and preparing me for some major work. That Sunday, we had a big family dinner followed by worship and prayer. While Lorelei and I were cleaning the dishes after dinner, she referenced a conversation we had earlier that week and told me she felt like God wanted me to know that He’s not going to give me band-aids and scars but that He wants to give me a new heart. Initially it didn’t spark anything special in me, but I accepted what she was saying and kept on with my task. Later on in the evening while we were worshipping God gave me an extremely vivid picture of what He wanted to do inside of me.

The picture started out almost like an episode of House M.D. where the doctors are working on the patient in the operating room and someone was in the observation deck watching the surgery. In this case both the observer and the patient were both me. I saw myself on the operating table with the surgical staff all around me. It seemed that they were doing open heart surgery because my chest was cracked wide open and my internal organs were exposed. Then I see the head surgeon, who appeared to be God, take my heart out of my chest. Now, I haven’t seen an actual heart other than on TV but in this case, my heart was blackened with scars and it was disfigured with clotted and crusted blood all over it (lovely visual, I know). At this point I’m assuming that the vision is going to progress into me having some type of transplant, which would line up perfectly with what Lorelei had shared with me earlier that evening. I began to grieve the loss of my existing heart but tried to embrace the newness that I thought God was going to give me. Instead, God takes my heart and placed it in this basin filled with blood. He then proceeds to ever so gently massage the organ and wipe away all the grime and filth from every crevice imaginable. Once He was satisfied with the cleaning, He took this freshly washed heart and placed it back inside my chest. As this vision was unfolding God narrated that He did not want to replace my heart with a new yet foreign one, but that He’s making my heart new! He reassured me that I won’t need to grieve the thought of losing myself with my old heart. What He was saying though, is that He was washing away the fear, pain and bitterness which had begun to suffocate my heart. He spoke that instead of being trapped by the old memories and situations, that I will be able to live, breathe and rejoice in everything I do whether it’s something new or something that resembles a tragic moment from my past.

Needless to say, I felt completely exposed and vulnerable yet for some reason I was compelled to share my vision with the group. It was suggested that I be prayed for, and I did not refuse. Rachel prayed over me that few people know the depth of pain I’ve been through in my life but in return few people will know the depth and extent of healing God has for me. And from this place of healing I will be able to speak into the lives of others and allow God’s healing to penetrate them as it did me. Ethan began to pray for me as well and he said I needed to be aware of how my heart was beating because I would actually be able to feel God moving and massaging my heart. For the next week I could feel my heart pounding in such a different way that I knew it had to be the presence of God coursing through my arteries! These events paved the way for the breakthrough of healing I experienced the following week, which you can read about in my previous blog.

Enjoy and be blessed!