Keep Your Heart Open

I just realized there are 100 days left in 2015. Yikes!

Where did the year go? Did someone short sheet the calendar?

It's time to start all those things I planned to complete this year.

Or maybe it's time to give up on them all and just love me a little better.

I think that's truly the secret: If you loved yourself, really loved yourself, you'd be a better everything.  A better parent, spouse, sibling, neighbor, employee, friend, citizen of the world, resident of planet Earth.

So I'm doing it.

I'm loving me harder. Starting with my heart. I plan to do 100 days of cardio. I plan to keep my heart wide open to love.

The heart is a muscle. The most important one. The one I neglect. I lift weights for my upper body so my arms look buff. I work out on my core so my back and abs are strong so I can toss my grandbabies in the air and not drop them. I work out on my lower body so my legs are strong.

My heart? I have neglected it. I keep promising to do cardio workouts, but I don't.

So starting on Wednesday, I ran 1.5 miles. I didn't like it. But my heart did.

I could hear it humming louder and pumping stronger, reminding me how vital it is.

Then today, my heart rewarded me. It opened wide. Wide enough to love someone I had shut out of my life.

I made amends to someone I had closed my heart on. It's embarrassing to admit, but I chose sides and didn't choose hers.

I didn't even need to choose. It wasn't even my rodeo or my monkeys, but WOOMP! my heart closed on her.

We talked on the phone. I said I was sorry. Made sure I actually said those two important words, not just, "I want to apologize." I needed to really apologize. I had been unkind.

My chest expanded to let my heart love her. What a cardio workout.