SOFT

You've heard the saying, "... a soft place to fall."  The corona confinement hasn't been a soft spot to fall for a lot of people.  It isn't a soft place if you lost your job, or if your elective surgery to replace your hip was postponed.  For many people it's become a hard place.  For certain it's a place most of us have never experienced and for many it's worse than for others. 

We love 'soft' things.  We use the expression that something is "soft as a baby's bum" meaning soft to touch.  We enjoy soft sheets and some of my most worn out sheets and towels are the softest.  Jeans are pre-washed and sometimes bleached to make them softer.  Most of our pets are soft to caress and cuddle. Stuffed toys and teddy bears are called "plush" because they are soft.  

One thing that's hard to keep soft is my heart.  Having a soft heart means compassion, empathy, a desire to reach out, especially to hold a hand, or give a hug.  It's hard to physically express  a soft heart when I'm not allowed to be within a 6 foot distance of another person outside my home.  I feel like I have to make my heart hard on purpose in order to keep a 'safe' distance because of all the restrictions.  I don't like it. 

Being too soft can have a downside when a child needs to be disciplined, or a truth needs to be spoken.  My heart isn't very soft towards the bank that makes me wait 45 minutes outside in the cold morning breeze, but at the same time is soft towards those enduring the same thing in the line.  Yes, as the saying goes, "We are all in this together."

A verse that kept coming to my mind when I was struggling with my marriage was, "Harden not your heart as in the day of provocation..."  Psalms 95:8 I had to look up that word and it means, "action or speech that makes someone annoyed or angry, especially deliberately,"  The key to my understanding and how to reconcile was in meditating on what was causing annoyance or anger, and find out if it was deliberate.  After a silent weekend retreat in the mountains, a soft spot where I go to search my heart, I knew I had to choose God's unconditional love for me, His soft spot for me, in exchange for what was causing annoyance and anger. 

That was the part I had to be deliberate about. I knew I couldn't keep my hard heart and receive the love God was offering.  I came home and said to my husband, "I was wrong. You were right."  and he said, "I wasn't all right and you weren't all wrong."  In those two confessions a wall of conflict broke down and the marriage has been strengthening ever since. Having a soft heart deliberately has made a huge difference.  

​I now know where the soft spot is for my hard heart to fall.  And I know that a lot of stuff on the outside doesn't matter!  We all need a soft spot towards our lives right now and towards others, especially those doing their best to offer good service in spite of this corona confinement crisis.  We can become their soft spot with a kind word, patient attitude and benevolent action!

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