I know in my heart

There’s a turn of phrase that we use. “I know in my heart.” It a silly phrase. To know in the heart. After all, what does the heart know? The mind is for knowing, for thinking. But the heart? What does the heart know?

Not to change the subject, but have you ever been rappelling? It’s great. You go to the top of a cliff, drop some anchors, fling your rope over the edge, and then glide gracefully down. It’s like flying… in a straight line… down. So more like falling. Falling with style.

The gear is a triumph of engineering. It’s light and strong and durable. The carabiners have reassuringly high number stamped on them. The ropes can hold an elephant. The harness can hold the weight of ten men. These are facts. They are indisputable. The gear will hold you.

But here’s the thing about facts. They are easy to believe standing on the ground. Harder to believe when you’re tipping off a cliff.

You’re harnessed up, roped up, gear in place, back to the cliff. Standing there, brave. One more step backward and you’ll begin your descent. The gear is good. The numbers say so. Then why aren’t you stepping backward?

Your heels are on the edge. The rope is taut. You pay out slack and lean back. Just a little. You pay out more slack and feel that tipping point, that point of no return, that point where you must trust in the gear. Your insides rebel, rise up, and voice their doubts.

The numbers say the gear is good, but your entire being screams that the numbers are bad and death is waiting. Don’t you see? You’re going to die if you step off that edge, you’re going to die, you’re going to…

There’s a rapid acceleration. A jerking stop. And suddenly you’re hanging. You don’t die. In fact, you’re flying. Well, hanging. Now would be a great time to look around and appreciate the experience. Or, alternately, it would be a great time to concentrate on that rope in front of you. How taut it is. How small it looks. How the only thing keeping it from speeding through your belay device is your death grip on the free end. Maybe you don’t enjoy the view right this second. The rope, after all, needs to be watched. Slowly, ever so slowly, you lower yourself to the ground.

The second time you rappel is very much like the first except now you feel silly for being scared. This does not stop you from being scared. It only adds a layer of shame. Like frosting. The frosting of shame on your fear cake.

But if you go often enough, something magic happens. You can step off that edge without imagining your death. One of the most incredible feelings in the world is to hang hundreds of feet off the ground without fear. It changes the dynamic of the rappel. You go from a world focused on survival to eyes filled with the broadness and wonderfulness of God’s creation stretching out below you. There are birds down there, flying below your feet. There is an updraft of air rushing over the cliff face bringing with it the scent of the pine trees and summer. The horizon stretches behind you, broad and framed with mountain peaks.

And that’s the difference between knowing with your head and knowing with your heart. It is easy to learn something in your mind. To memorize facts and figures to be repeated. But it is another thing entirely to push that knowledge into the deep places of your being where the heart resides.

It is in the heart that marriage finds its home. For it to work as it should, for it to be more than simple cohabitation, you need to know in your heart that you love the other person and that they love you. Head knowledge isn’t enough to make the bonding of two humans possible. The love must, must be formed in the depths of the heart.

Our poetry and music make this act, this heart bonding, seem easy. As if one could simply fall into it. Two people cross paths and spiral effortlessly into a profound love. But, as with so much in life, actually doing the thing is harder than it would seem.

You see, marriage is not a onetime choice. It is not a box to be checked. It is not frozen in time. You choose to love each day. You choose to love in the face of bad hair days, morning breathe, and grumpiness. But you also choose to love in the face of candle lit dinners, fits of gleeful laughter, and coffee at sunrise. For better and for worse.

If you do it right, after enough days have turned to weeks, weeks to months, and months to years, you will find that you love each other as easily and as fully as an adventurer trusts the rappel. You knew it, all along. That you loved that silly, crazy person. That you loved them for their laugh and their wit. But the heart is a place of deep waters. It took time and repetition to drive the love deep enough for the sound of their voice to make your soul sing.

That song is beautiful and mesmerizing. It speaks of wild oceans and tall mountains. Of great rushing winds and quiet breezes. It is new and old, as timeless as time itself. It is a part of you being born more fully. In that song are shapes and shadows of the love that drove the creation of creation itself. It is the briefest hint, the small drifting note of the song our Creator sings for us.

There is an indescribable freedom to be found in knowing, knowing in your deepest of hearts, that you are loved without question, without reservation, without stipulation, caveat, or legal rider. When you have that, really have that, you can finally open your eyes and see the world that God made for you. See the beauty. See the pain. See the path to adventure.