How to Keep Your Heart Open After Hurt

• By candidasullivan
• May 26, 2026
• No Comments

Do you struggle to keep your heart open? Does love feel too heavy?

Sometimes, my heart feels too fragile to continue. It holds too many heartaches, broken promises, disappointments, and rejections. I try to venture out again, determined that this experience will be different, only to be hurt again. The higher and deeper my wounds stack, the harder it is for me to allow myself to be seen. 

I want to hide. I want to protect myself from more heartaches, but closing myself off also hurts me. 

With all these feelings in mind, I wonder: what do we do with a broken and fearful heart?

The answer is to love unconditionally. Without worrying if it will be reciprocated. We love deeply and fully, the way we want to be loved. We love with the same forgiveness and grace God gives us. 

Sweet friends, sometimes I get confused about my purpose for being here. I try to make it all about me and what I want. I get offended by everything, and the enemy uses my emotions against me. He loves it when I carry around every heartache and offense, and look at them often. But how can I reflect God’s love this way?

Sometimes, it’s not even that others hurt me. It’s that he misconstrued an interaction. The enemy twists simple moments into painful meanings. How often do we interpret someone’s actions with our hurt? We even go deeper and think we understand their thoughts and intentions. 

How many times has the enemy taken a simple gesture and rearranged it into an offense? 

Therefore, I have to decide how I want to live my life. Do I want to live with harshness or forgiveness? High expectations of others, or grace?

Life is too short to be offended and hurt by everything. Therefore, when I feel the sting of heartache, I need to take it to the Lord. I need to ask Him to reveal the truth to me. Most of the time, if I am being hateful with someone else, it has nothing to do with them. Often, my own hurt and exhaustion shape how I see things. My nerves are raw, and my thoughts are not true. 

When I can approach my relationships and interactions with love, then I can be a witness to God. 

God is love.

That’s what I want to reflect on others. 

I don’t want to reflect bitterness.

I don’t want to reflect hatred.

I don’t want others to experience the enemy when they interact with me. 

Jesus gave us the most beautiful gift intertwined with our salvation. Love and forgiveness can fix it all. It can heal it all. When we withhold love and forgiveness, we let sin become greater than love. 

So today, I choose love. I choose to love and forgive when it’s hard. I chose to let love be my reflection. 

1 Peter 4:8 KJV

8 And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.