How and why does God change a heart?

**What follows is most of episode 20: Heart Pivots from the Praise Through It podcast. Listen here, or read on!

Let me tell you a story about a girl who just wanted to live in the sunshine, and about how and why God changes hearts.

I grew up in a place that was snowy and cold from October through April. I have trick-or-treated in the snow and I have brushed snow off my car before church on Easter Sunday. We try not to say hate in our family, so I’ll say this: I detested it. The snow, salt, always being cold. I wanted out. And listen, I was a praying girl. There was not a whisper in my heart that God didn’t know about. The loudest one? Bring me somewhere WARM! 

Well, wish granted. I married a soldier whose first duty station was Savannah, Georgia. I loved it. The sun, the sand, the warmth. The kind, warm people. Did I mention the sun? Oh, bliss.

Also, as wishes tend to go, along with all that light and easy came a whole lot of dark and hard.

My first deployment as a spouse, living 900 miles away from my family. I remember very clearly learning that my faith in God depended on Greg coming home from Iraq alive and well. This was 2007 and 2008; we still had regular war casualties at that point. He came home, but then what did my faith rest on? I had to find out.

And there was my first cockroach sighting, killing, and the start of a hate-hate relationship between me and those things. Oh, I said hate. That’s the real-real, though. There is not one smaller thing on this planet that has grown my character more than those disgusting little critters. The first time one flew into my house -- because in the lowcountry they fly -- I screamed and called a friend to kill it for me. By the time I left the southeast at the end of 2020, I was like a cockroach killing ninja master. 

Also, the heat. My last week in Savannah, the thermometer read 123. Degrees. Fahrenheit. 123. I cried actual, small tears.

When I think about how much I wanted out of my hometown, I think of how God awoke within me a desire to be warm. That’s it. That’s all it took to get me out and in to an adventure of a lifetime.

God used this very simple, small seed of a desire--wanting to be warm--because He knew where I would land. He woke me up to hidden pieces of my heart long before the opportunity was there, so that when it was time, I could jump right in.

Then, eventually, he changed it. God changed my heart to want out of the intense, inescapable sauna Savannah is from May through September. 

So, onto Ohio.

Another not-so-sunny place but one that would be closer to home, both in culture and in driving distance. I remember saying to my mom: It feels like we’re moving home. The greatest gift was this: actually spend time together. Like, who am I and who are you and who are we together kind of time together. As an Army wife at the beginning of two wars, those aren’t questions you could answer at your leisure. You just had to kind of be okay waiting until the Army told you it was time to answer them. So we took our time to answer them and, as it turns out, we really liked each other and we liked us together. We have some of our most solid, foundational memories in Cincinnati. 

Also, we lamented the lack of sunshine and felt pretty lonely as a couple. We had a really hard time finding friends that stuck, which was the polar opposite of our time in Savannah. By the end of our two years there, our hearts had changed. Those initial feelings of excitement and adventure had waned.

What I learned from that second city go-round was that those initial feelings, the excitement and anticipation before the disappointment, are often to get our buy-in. Like, God is going to do what God’s going to do but if we could see the end of it we’d pull the e-brake quicker than you can say Boo. So we get a picture in our heads of what we think it’s going to be, we get there and do the thing, then if we’re mature and willing enough, we’ll change our picture so that through our disappointment we learn, grow, embrace, enjoy, cherish, and hope.

After Ohio was where my heart had been asking for since I was 16: North Carolina. I knew--without a shadow of a doubt--that something was waiting for me there. All these moving pieces had been clinking along for years, all to line up to this life in North Carolina. That’s the way I saw it, anyway. I still see it that way, honestly, even in hindsight. I had literally canvassed the world looking for a job. California. Texas, Wyoming, Florida, Maryland, Germany, Qatar, London. North Carolina is the only job I got out of more than one hundred applications. So this was it, North Carolina was going to be our life.

And it was, for 9 years. A whole lot of sunshine, warmth, beachtime, friend time, friends-turned-family time. A kid. A dog. A beach bungalow I will always cherish. A passion for dancing for me, a passion for flying for Greg. A church that taught me my faith needed to stretch beyond the borders and reach into the corners of every tribe and every tongue. Joy so great it would bring me to tears sometimes. I remember saying more than once, “I never thought I’d be this happy.”

Ya know what else it came with? A whole lot of hard.

Difficult employment conditions for Greg more than once. Greg almost not getting into flight school. Going through our savings despite extremely frugal spending. Breaking through confidence barriers, which is no small amount of work. Being bullied at work. Almost dying in childbirth. Going through our savings again, despite extremely frugal spending. Dreams lost. Friends lost. Disappointments abounding.

If we had seen the pervasive stress and tension and the near loss of life and the gritty reality of what North Carolina would bring us, we would have said Byeeeee to that opportunity in 2011. We probably would’ve just taken our chances and stayed in Ohio, even though our hearts had already pivoted away from it.

But there were these simple seeds in our hearts that we let take root: the love of sunshine and the love of adventure. That’s it. That’s all God gave us, all we needed to make the decision to move down south twice in five years. And what we got in return feels infinity-fold. The immeasurable gifts. The growing up. The very real faith that we have fought so hard for. The friendships that have sustained us. The compassion grown out of our pain. The empathy grown out of our frustration. The determination grown out of surviving, together. 

We didn’t ask for any of those extras. We just asked for sunshine and adventure. The rest is just frosting on the cake. We have to take it all together, though, as one story.

So in 2017, when a little pivot started in my heart about wanting to be cold, I went with it--from my phone at first. I became obsessed with all these Canada travel accounts on Instagram. I fell in love with the land, the beauty of the snow, the cold I could feel and breathe through my phone screen. I fell in love with a Canadian artisan that I made sure my husband knew I wanted to support. I wanted to be cold. There I was, in the warm sunshine I thought I needed to survive, and I wanted to be cold.

God was changing my heart. Again.

The longing grew and grew over three years and then in 2020, do you know what happened? This and that and the other thing happened, and the circumstances lined right up that we would be moving home. To the cold, snow and salt we happily skipped out on the last 15 years. To our families, yes, but to a place both Greg and I swore we’d never return.

Yet, we were completely ready. Because we paid attention to the little pivots our hearts made along the way. Wanting to be cold. Missing the snow. Missing our family more and more as time went on. Not being willing to live in such a way that these little whispers were ignored or pushed aside, because it had always been in listening to those whispers we were given our greatest gifts.

So yes, we’re cold--again. We shovel. We bundle up. We wince at the sub-zero wind chills. We pine for summer, planning our escape into the sunshine whenever we can. But honestly? We don’t hate it. We don’t detest it. In fact, I run three days a week and walk almost daily, no matter the temperature. My heart has done a complete 180, coming back to this place and--listen to this--enjoying this place I was once hell-bent on never considering as a place to make a life.

I take in the fresh air all the way from my toes. I relish in the whooshing quiet of falling snow. I marvel at the beauty and serenity of freshly-fallen snow. I laugh with my whole self with my extended family. I help my daughter make new friendships. We’re planting ourselves in a new church. We’re rediscovering old friendships with people who have stood almost like a True North all these years. We’re doing all these things all because we were willing to let our hearts pivot.

I keep coming back to Psalm 84:5-6 --
Happy are the people whose strength is in You,
whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.
As they pass through the Valley of Tears
they make it a source of springwater;
even the autumn rain will cover it with blessings.

There are pieces of your life that you thought would be so very different than they are right now. You walked toward them because little seeds in your heart told you to do so, and now the picture is different than what you painted at the beginning. I’m here to remind you that just because it’s all fallen apart, or it’s different than what you imagined, doesn’t mean you’ve done the wrong thing. There are lessons in the valley of tears, pain and heartache that can be made into a source of springwater, even amidst the lonely and heartbreaking storms of life. 

What’s true about the simple seeds of your heart, the pivots it tries to make from time to time, is you don’t know where they’ll lead, and that can be really scary.

What’s also true about those heart pivots is if you trust it all to the One who made your heart in the first place, the valleys you go through will be nothing compared to the mountains you stand on.

What’s true about heart pivots is sometimes they’re really confusing. Like, I wanted to be warm for 35 years, now all of a sudden I want to be cold? What?! But I think that if we don’t underestimate how great the gift of life can be and where it can take us, even those little heart pivots that seem to make no sense can be woven into an incredible story filled with faith, hope, and love, if only we’re brave enough to pay attention and pivot along with it.

Today…

May you hear God’s whispers in the stillest part of your heart.

May God hear the whispers from the deepest part of your heart.

May your heart find strength and courage to follow even the tiniest heart pivot.

May your heart find joy in the lessons offered by a faith that follows God’s pivots, even when it makes no sense to you.

May the peace, comfort, love, and guidance of the Trinity be on you as you work your way through the maze of everyday life.

And may your Valley of Tears be short and your autumn rain blessings be in abundant supply.

Show notes:

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