Guard your heart?

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”

Proverbs 4:23

If you spent more than an hour on the campus of a Christian university, I would almost guarantee that you’d overhear someone fervently reminding a friend to “guard their heart” while sharing a latte at the campus coffee shop, called something like “Common Grounds” or “HeBrews” or “The Well” or [insert Bible pun here]. I spent my four years of undergrad at a Christian college that was jokingly called the Bridal Institute of Los Angeles where people were studying to get their M-R-S degree with the slogan, “ring before spring.” So, as you could imagine, this refrain, “guard your heart” was ringing throughout the courtyard, cafeteria, classrooms, and dorms. While I appreciate and agree with some of the sentiment—be mindful, when dating, about who you let into your emotional world and how much power you give them in your life—I think that us biblically educated twenty-one year olds were slightly narrow in our exegesis. Shocking.

Since graduating college, I’ve started and switched careers, gone to grad school, gotten married, moved across the country, become a mom, navigated tumultuous political environments, processed loss and grief—and not once have I been reminded to “guard my heart.” I haven’t even thought much about this proverb myself. And I guess it’s because I’m no longer in the season of life where I’m dating? But, the irony of our very modern understanding of this proverb is that at the time of its writing, what we consider dating in our Western context would have been completely unheard of.

So, here we are in 2025, left with this ancient wisdom that has become cliché dating advice. But, I think we may have missed the bigger picture. That wisdom seems a lot more resonant with my life as a 31 year old than it did when I was a 19 year old navigating the wild world of Christian romance.

Throughout the past few months, this proverb has been popping into my mind and ringing in my ears. It’s been widening and opening and changing me. But, not for the same reasons it once did.

If you’re alive and awake in our current moment, at some point, you’ve probably been overwhelmed by the constant barrage of media coming your way. We wake up to alarms on our iPhones waiting with notifications from the news to alert us about the latest political drama or celebrity death that took place while we were sleeping. If they are feeling generous, maybe they’ll throw a new recipe our way—good, another thing to add to the grocery list. While we drink our morning coffee, we scroll on social media and see our friends on tropical vacations while we are still, somehow, having to wear our winter coats in April!? We scroll through the opinions of close friends and that one random girl from high school that you still follow. We turn on our favorite podcast for our commute, where the hosts bemoan some of the current happenings before jumping into interviewing their weekly guest. We walk down the street and see ads for all of the things that we don’t have—the latest weight loss drug, our new favorite skin care product, the coolest upgrade to the VW Vans. Phew.

And then we get to work.

We are exposed to and consume ALL of this before we even start our workday– where we have to communicate with co-workers who aren’t pulling their weight or be patient with 12-year-old boys right after recess or work on a budget that feels impossible.

Guard your heart.

Maybe this is more relevant now than ever. Maybe, in the era of the internet, it is particularly important to take stock of what we are consuming and guard what we allow in. This year, for Lent, J and I decided to “fast” from social media and the news. Before you call us irresponsible for not staying informed, I’d like to note that I find out every major news story and then some just through urban osmosis. But the way that my heart has been filled with more peace, contentment, openness, kindness and love has been a beautiful surprise.

But, what does this proverb tell us? Why should we guard our hearts?

Ah, yes, because everything we do flows from it. The way we work flows from what we allow into our heart. The way we parent is a direct line from the things we pour in and block out. The type of friend we are is an echo of what consumes us. Even something as small as the way we drive in traffic has a correlation to what we are letting into our heart.

A quick example.

Recently, I found myself caught up in the media barrage as described above. One evening I was walking to meet friends for dinner with my 9-month-old daughter strapped to my chest in her carrier. I made the very intentional choice to not put socks on her because she would kick them off within the first 60 seconds of the journey. Plus, we were only walking a couple of blocks. I was enjoying the slightly warmer weather and was walking towards an elderly woman who looked like she was about to comment about how precious my little girl was. I was smiling as we approached each other and, instead of offering a wave or hello, she glared at me and criticized the fact that my baby had no socks on. I rolled my eyes, kept walking, and didn’t say a word. But, I was fuming. My heart was already so weighed down by everything I’d been consuming, what was flowing from it was resentment and rumination on all of the things I could have said to this random woman on the street. The fact that I am even remembering this story now says a lot about where my heart was at and the fact that it wasn’t about this woman, after all.

Fast forward to last week, in the midst of my Lenten fast. I decided to run to Target late on a Sunday night to pick up groceries to make a Guinness stew for St. Patrick's day. I left my phone on the checkout counter after I paid and, a few minutes later, realized it was gone. I went back only to find that the person behind me in line had seen and seized the opportunity. It was stolen. I then spent the rest of the evening with the security team at Target as J was changing our passwords and trying to track the phone down. The next morning the iPhone location was popping up in Colombia and later that day, Peru. I spent hours and hundreds of dollars dealing with my stolen phone. And, somehow, it didn’t take long for me to brush it off and begin to laugh at the fact that J was running through the streets of our neighborhood confronting strangers who were in the general vicinity of the phone's location. My heart was not nearly as heavy; I had been guarding the intake, and what flowed out of it was levity and forgiveness.

When I imagine guarding my heart, I try to envision a picket fence rather than a cinder block wall. Growing up in the suburbs of Phoenix, I am very familiar with cinder block walls. Most backyards are divided by giant gray bricks that make you feel like your neighbors might not even exist. Peace comes by blocking out the very existence of others. But with a picket fence, you can still see and engage your neighbors. You are aware of their presence. You know what's happening outside and in your neighborhood. But you get to choose who you open the gate for and when you invite others onto your porch or even into your home. It’s not about blocking people out, never letting them in, staying oblivious; it’s about resisting the need to consume and be consumed by the never-ending reminders of what’s going on and what’s going wrong.

For me, this ancient proverb about guarding your heart has transformed from a cringy slogan into a deeply meaningful practice in my life, the way that ancient wisdom often does. So, let’s sit together over a *virtual* coffee at a pun-inspired coffee shop while I remind you, and remind myself, to guard our hearts—because everything else will flow from there.