Only You Can "Fit" or "Fill" Your Heart!



On Monday I took a little Christmas shopping excursion to Tubac, a small arts and crafts village south of Tucson. In one of the shops I came across a small Christmas ornament shaped like a heart. It was red and designed like a locket that you might open and place the picture of someone you love inside of it. The outside of the heart-locket said “You Fit My Heart” (or so I thought on first glancing at it). Immediately I thought to myself “How perfect is that? I fit my heart!” And I felt warm inside. It felt right. Self-acceptance and the gift of self-love were suddenly mine to own.

I purchased the heart-locket ornament and when I arrived home later in the day, I already had a perfect place in mind on my Christmas tree for it. As I was taking the ornament out of it’s wrappings, I glanced at it again and realized that it didn’t say “You Fit My Heart.” What it actually said was “You Fill My Heart.” Any initial disappointment was immediately wiped away. “Wow,” I thought, “That sentiment is equally as perfect. After all, I’m the one who has to fill my own heart with love and caring—first and foremost.”

It was an amazing transformation for me. In the past, if I had seen this same ornament I would have romanticized about how it was an omen proclaiming that I will soon meet that special person who is going to “fit” or “fill” my heart and make my whole life worth living. All of my thoughts would have been focused on finding that someone who was going to make me and my life fabulous—finally. For days or weeks I would have orchestrated this fantasy/fairy tale in my mind and I’d been on the lookout, scanning every face that passed my way for signs of that this was the perfect person who was impatiently hoping to find me and save me from myself.

And every time I had such a fairytale daydream, it ended by brewing into a devastating nightmare of disappointment because there was no one who stepped forward to rescue me, to give me love and value in this world and to make my life worth living. Why? Because unknown to me at the time was this very important fact-- that I was looking desperately for someone else to do my job and that no body else could do it. I had to be the one to love, value and rescue me.

You are the only one who can first and foremost “fit” or “fill” your own heart. We all need to value ourselves enough to give ourselves enough love to fill our own hearts. If you feel like this is an impossible task, ask your Higher Power to lend you a hand. He/She gladly will. All you have to do is ask and be equally as determined to do your part in honoring and befriending yourself.

My Christmas wish for everyone this year is that we will all have that graced moment where we have feelings of tenderness and warmth toward ourselves, feelings of genuine love and appreciation as we recognize that YES—we do fit our hearts and that we are worthy and valuable enough to fill our hearts each and every day with all of the love we could ever need. We can then look forward to allowing others to compliment that love we already possess.

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