What’s your heart condition?

This essay was first published on The Daily BS on Feb. 15, 2025.

This week, my stalwart, blue-eyed husband had a birthday. There is a real sense in which I still feel like the teenage girl who met the black-haired John Travolta lookalike fresh out of high school. Forty trips around the sun later, though, there’s not a cake large enough to hold all the candles. Now, we have a few dings in our fenders, so to speak, and after a long day at work, we think (as a friend put it) that “sitting is fun!”

On his birthday, I pulled out a photo that was taken some years ago. There he was with his four sons gathered about him. His head was bowed in prayer, arms spread wide to take them in. It was the epitome of paternal love and guidance, and I pondered, for a moment, that scene.

I knew the adversity he was facing when the picture was taken. It was a long, difficult chapter that seemed to have no end. And yet there he was, modeling for his family what was important to him and demonstrating his unconditional love. It was a portrait that was worth a thousand, thousand words.

I thought about his mighty, beating heart. Many people, including close relatives, have found themselves with heart disease. Over time, vessels can calcify and harden, restricting the flow of blood, which is life. Suddenly the big one hits, and they’re gone.

What is true in the physical realm is true in the spiritual realm. Hard times can embitter and calcify the vessels of the heart, restricting the flow of life. Put plainly, hard things can harden us, and therein lies the rub.

All these years later since that precious photo was taken, my husband has the happy diagnosis of an enlarged heart. Not in the physical sense, of course, but spiritually. In the fires of affliction, he inclined his heart toward God, and in so doing, he became a new man. A man with greater compassion, greater mercy. A man of patience and prayer. A man of temperance, wisdom, and love.

An enlarged heart, you see, is a softened one, replete with life and goodness. Everyone around him is a beneficiary, and it all came down to his choices.

At many points along the way, he had the chance to choose bitterness. He had the choice to cultivate grudges or to work through them and forgive. When he was faced with his own failures and shortcomings, he had the choice to stay as he was or to grow. Over and over, he chose growth. He is the man he is today because of the condition of his heart. He’s taken care of it well, and his life bears the witness.

But back, now, to that photo of a father praying with his sons. Just as physical heart disease can be hereditary, spiritual heart disease can be, too. The lives we live in front of our children will often become the patterns and behaviors they’ll adopt. In this way, generations of bad choices and habits can be handed down.

The good news, though, is that just as disease can be passed down, strong genes and good health can be handed down, too. When we model virtues such as kindness, truthfulness, compassion, and self-control, our children have the best possible chance to become men and women of character and grace. And, even better, when we realize that we are missing the mark, we can do what my husband did. We can choose to change.

When children watch a parent change, it is a powerful thing. It begins with, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. Will you forgive me?” These simple words begin to rebuild what was broken.

Then comes the next step, which is teaching them the new things we’re learning. That’s what we did. By using these tools, our family has seen incredible healing, and the bonds that connect us now are so very strong. We have shed old habits and patterns, and we’ve taken up new ones. We are creating a different inheritance, a better legacy for our children and the many who will follow after them.

Now, you. It is not enough to merely hear the story of someone else’s transformation and growth. You must decide for yourself what will be the condition of your own heart. When hard things come, will you harden your heart? Will you wallow in bitterness? Will you refuse the chance to grow and change? Will you choose to stay locked in old patterns, or will you choose something else?

If you will make the hard choices that my husband made, your heart will change. I guarantee it. It will soften and enlarge with boundless room for compassion, mercy, patience, and love. If you season every decision with prayer, governed by wisdom, you will find yourself living a life for which you could scarcely have dared to hope. What, my friend, will you do with your heart?

America’s small, caffeinated mom appears every Saturday with Bo Snerdley on the James Golden Radio Show. BYOC (Bring Your Own Coffee) and listen in!