Thank you for your encouraging words. I’m glad we’ve found common ground in the Lord and in our unsettled pursuit of what He has for us.

Great comment.

I struggle in listening to my head or my heart, as well. Like you, I had hoped that one day they would simply get along, and we could move forward, peacefully, together. Many times I think of my head as my own will, my own desires, my own longings for normalcy and cultural comfort. My heart, I believe, is the spiritual epicenter of who I was created to be. My head has certain ideas about what life should look like and what it is I should do. My heart, likewise, has ideas and passions of its own and longs for me to follow Him. My heart, as a Christ follower, belongs to the Spirit of the Lord, and I believe that the Spirit many times does conflict with what we believe to make the most sense in our heads. This is the analogy I was thinking of in writing this article. There is a war being waged between my personal sin desire to do what I want to selfishly do and that of the heart’s (Spirit’s) will for my life, what the Lord has for me. The two seem to battle back and forth between each other.

The great thing about following the Lord is that Jesus is the answer to this battle. He is the Peacemaker. He is the answer to the war raging within us. He has made a way to fully trust in Him and totally surrender the battle into His caring, loving arms. In completely following Him, I am finding, there is peace. It may not be the type of peace we are used to experiencing, but it is an eternal, extraordinary, indescribable peace. He sacrificed so that we could have the chance to die to our selfish “heads” and live fully according to our hearts, to follow Him regardless of what everyone else (even our own common-sense brains!) says. I’m still learning this. Every day is a journey with the Lord, and all I can say is, follow Him, experience His love, and obey Him. Follow the path He has placed on your heart and never look back.

In this reality there is no more need for masks made by our own human hands because Jesus destroys these masks over time and replaces them with a new self, a new heart, and a new face able to shine forth regardless of what masks we may have attempted in the past. The love of true Christ followers, I believe, is impossible to mask. When our hearts are filled with His Spirit, and we walk according to his plan, nothing can hide our love, nothing can mask our joy.