Heart-Ties

“Soul ties. The thing that can make you hear an old-school slow jam and think of somebody you haven’t seen in years. Soul ties. The thing that makes old people who’ve been together for years finish each other’s sentences. Don’t you wish mama had told you when you were young that, when you lie with someone, you lie not just with her body but also with her soul? And whatever condition the other person’s soul is in, you are guaranteed to take a piece with you—whether you want to or not.” -Kirk Franklin 

Forming bonds with others is one of the most incredible parts of life. It allows us to feel another's pain, laugh until we're sore and rejoice at others victories. Heart ties bond us together, they are what separates the love you have for your best friend from a random person on the street. It is allowing someone to see the intimate parts of your heart that not everyone has the honor of viewing. Its why we feel pain when relationships end and why our hearts can be so damaged by the carelessness of another. They are formed between friends, mothers, lovers, fathers, sisters and brothers and they have the ability to be beautiful. Unfortunately, like everything God created to be so sweet, the enemy has made heart ties a weapon. 

It can happen so easily that if we aren't careful we can find ourselves tied to people we haven't seen in years. Our generation is so hungry to be wanted that we give everything away so quickly hoping it will be enough to make someone stay, even if it's just for the night. The world has told us that sharing your body doesn't mean you have to share your heart but why then are we surrounded by people who are desperate to numb the pain? The physical and emotional can never be separated, only shut down. 

I thought I had mastered the art of being physical without connecting any emotions to it, in reality they were still very much intertwined I had just chosen to numb the emotions that came with the physical. Maybe it's the level of dysfunction so many of us grew up in, maybe it's the live fast die young mentality some of us swear by, or maybe its something deeper. I don't know the reason for it but I do know that it is destroying a generation that has so so much to offer. 

Negative heart ties left unbroken will suffocate and cripple positive ones. Every time we are intimate with another person, specifically sexually, we form a bond with them. Whether you feel it or not the act of anything sexual requires you to open up to a certain degree. I don't care if you have been with so many partners sex has become meaningless, just because you choose not to feel it doesn't mean it isn't there. Every time I gave a piece of myself away it became easier and easier to shut that area down. 

Heart ties can also be formed by emotional intimacy. One of my strongest ties was with a person I had never been physical with but I had given him a piece of my heart. The good news is, you have the power to take back the things you have given away or that have been taken from you. By breaking those ties you are releasing yourself from that person and taking that part of your heart back. The past cannot be changed but it can be restored by letting God cover those areas. 

Letting God piece back together my sexual identity was one of the hardest most intense processes I've ever been through. I was driven though driven by the future. I want to go into my marriage as a whole person who is able to give everything to the fullest. I don't want to bring my past into my future and that meant choosing to walk through pain to get to the other side. 

With the help of my mentors I made a list of the people I had potential heart ties to. It included family, those I had been intimate with, and those I had given my heart to. One by one we went through and cut ties with them. Some of them I ended all contact with, others (family mostly) I changed the way I viewed our relationships, which took time. It allowed me to close that chapter of my life and move forward. 

Don't allow what is behind you keep you from moving into your future because you have more ahead of you than you could have ever imagined, regardless of what your past looks like.