Our Stories
God's Heart Beats Me
By Stew | posted 03/05/2009
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart..." Mark 12:30
Last year if you'd asked me about the purpose of my heart I would've answered, "Beats me." But this year I've developed a bit better understanding of the heart. In January I found myself feeling tired and weak with my heart beating at about 120 beats per minute. I went home to bed, hoping that with rest my heart would bring itself back into a normal rhythm, as it had done before. (For me, normal is 54 beats per minute.) Not this time. Eventually, after trying hard to ignore the problem for a few days, I ended up under anesthesia while my heart was shocked back to a normal pulse with a 50-watt charge. (Apparently, you can sometimes get the same effect by dunking your head into a bucket full of ice water.) The procedure was successful, and I walked out with a heart that beat normally. But normal didn't last long.
Three weeks later my heart was racing again. This time the medical team decided they wanted to fix the problem permanently rather than temporarily with another zapping of the heart. So they've put me on medication thin my blood and to prevent my heart from beating too fast. Now it beats in the 70 to 90 range, although not with a regular beat: the smaller upper chambers beat too fast for the big lower chambers to keep up. As a result, my heart beats erratically and inefficiently, and I'm much more tired and sleep much longer than usual.
In trying to understand what's going on with my heart, I've learned a lot. For example, there's less than 1-1/2 gallons of blood in the body, the heart is a pulsating, variable-speed muscle about the size of a fist, and it takes less than a minute (approximately 50 pulses) for it to pump the blood in and out the lungs, through the arteries, out to the capillaries, and then to return it back through the veins. The heart pumps blood through this circuit over 1,700 times a day. A lot of things can go wrong with the plumbing of the heart: a valve between chambers can be damaged and leak; parts of the heart muscle can be "attacked," lose blood flow and cease to function; the nerves that control pulsation can get out of sync and produce arrhythmias such as flutter or fibrillation; or the entire muscle can lose it's elasticity, enlarge to 2-1/2 times normal size, and operate less like a pump and more like a small child squeezing a water balloon.
Currently, I'm waiting to get the go-ahead for a cardio-ablation, a procedure to correct arrhythmia where the equivalent of a tiny little soldering iron is snaked up a vein into the heart, and used to cauterize and circumcise a small scar across part of my heart to prevent my out-of-rhythm heart from beating to two masters instead of one. In theory, I'll be okay, and everything should return to normal, but I've got to admit, this has been an unsettling experience.
When I found myself lying in bed, exhausted, with my heart racing away, a few thoughts struck me. I wasn't too concerned that I might die suddenly, but I did come to realize that I shouldn't expect to live to be 80 or 90; 70 or 80 is a better bet. I also became concerned-and remain concerned-that the quality of my life will not be nearly as good with a bad heart as with a normal one. A bad heart is a tired heart.
The other thought, or question, that lately has been on my overly rhythmic heart is a simple one: Why does the heart beat?
I realized, that after 54 years of life, I'd taken my heart for granted. I've calculated that it has beaten for me about a billion and a half times, and I hadn't thought about this laudable, reliable performance much at all. I had just assumed it would beat forever. The more I thought about this, the weirder and scarier it was. My heart beats to its own drummer. It doesn't really listen to me. It doesn't matter if I want it to stop, my heart won't do it. The heart cells are made to pulse, that's what they do. And they're made to pulse together.
The fact that I don't make my own heart beat doesn't explain why it beats. I guess you could say that it beats so that it can pump blood through the lungs and so that it can transmit oxygen and fuel and hormones throughout the body. Another explanation might be that my heart has evolved to do what it does and has adapted to provide me a good chance of propagating my DNA (or its DNA) into the future. That would explain what the heart does, but still not why it does it.
In the Bible, the heart is usually referred to metaphorically as where one's emotions, one's will, or one's character is located. So in the Bible are hard hearts, soft hearts, joyful hearts, callous hearts, stubborn hearts, lion hearts, faithful hearts, undivided and divided hearts, upright hearts, wicked hearts, fearful hearts, unhappy hearts, hearts of stone, hearts turned to wax, steadfast hearts, and deluded and pure hearts. We are called on to search our hearts, to open wide our hearts, and to guard our hearts because they are the wellsprings of life. Still, what we have here is mainly description. Who will answer why? Why does the heart beat?
In Matthew 15:19 we are warned that "out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander," so the heart is an equal opportunity employer; the heart expresses our emotions, our will, and our character, whether good or bad. However, in Mark 12:30 we are each told to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength," as well as in Mark 12:33 "to love your neighbor as yourself." This love for God and our neighbor is why the heart beats. Through the grace of God each heart is allowed to beat.
Last year I didn't understand why the heart exists. "Beats me" was my answer of ignorance. Today I can say that the fear of God has created a bit of wisdom in my heart. Now I know that love happens when we live in rhythm with the heart of Jesus Christ. I also know that the question "Why does my heart beat?" may have many answers, but only one right answer: God's heart beats me.
To respond to this message, email Stew at stewka@comcast.net.
