Heart Beat

I had to wear a heart monitor for a couple of days last week.  Now, in the world of medical tests and procedures, this probably rates pretty much at the bottom of the scale on pain, inconvenience, and invasiveness.  It was really no big deal.  But still, it made me think.

For 48 hours, this little box counted my every heartbeat.  My heart rate is pretty low, so a generous estimate is 172 800 beats stored in that monitor.  The little box captured the moments when my heart beat a little faster (like when I went for a run) and when it beat a little slower (like when I was sleeping).  I wondered, as I wore it, what the person looking at the recording would be able to tell by looking at that dancing line.  Would he be able to tell when I was sleeping?  If I was dreaming?   When I got up in the night to use the bathroom?  What would the line of my heartbeat reveal about me?


And then, after 48 hours, I was instructed to disconnect the wires and return the monitor.  I watched as the little green light on the box blinked-blinked-blinked to show that it was recording as I disconnected the first wire.  I wondered if it would stop blinking.  It didn't.  It was still recording, but suddenly there was nothing to record.  Did my line go flat, as if I had died, when in fact, I was still very much alive?

It all felt so clinical, in a way.  My heart, in some ways the very essense of my life, captured in a box no bigger than a smart phone.  My heart, summarised in a wavy line.  Surely I can't be captured that easily.  I like to think I'm more complex than that.  But then it occured to me that wavy line is unique to me, as unique as my fingerprints and retina scan.  And I wonder . . . I wonder if all those variations that make my heartbeat unique to me are actually a visible picture of the heart of me, those things that are dear to me, my passions and dreams and desires, the things that fill me with joy, the things that enrage me, all those parts that make me, me.  I'm fairly certain that the cardiac specialist would laugh at me and roll his eyes, but I wonder what the One who changed my heart of stone into a heart of flesh would say.  I wonder, as he watches every beat of my heart, not just for 48 hours, but for every day, every moment, every second that he has ordained for me, if he can see in the beating of my heart how it has expanded as I have learned to love and dream.  Surely the waves must be deeper, broader, just somehow . . . more.  I wonder if the line stutters and hesitates in those times when my heart breaks.  Surely those moments of breathless agony are reflected in that wavy line.  They must be.  My heart feels so crippled as it trips and stumbles over itself.  And I wonder if God's heartbeat forms a shadow line that beats with mine, and under it, and through it.  It seems that there are times when those two lines beat almost in sync, and other times when they collide with each other.  I wonder how often his heartbeat sustains my own, and how often I allow my heart to truly be broken for the things that break his heart.  Does my wavering line show it?  Is there anything, anything at all in the pattern of my heartbeat that reflects the pattern of his heart?  Is there anything, anything at all in that little box I wore for 48 hours that would show that this is the recording of one whose heart has been captured by grace?

Oh, I know, it's whimsy and imagination.

But still . . .
I wonder.