I have often admonished my daughters to follow the advice of Proverbs 4:23 to “guard your heart.” While this is sound advice offering shelter from many pains that young ladies often endure we must not take it to its extreme end.
Love anything, and our heart will certainly be wrung and possible broken. If you want to make sure of keeping in intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket of coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. – C.S. Lewis
Lord, please grant my daughters the ability to love with complete abandon while at the same time guarding their affections fiercely under the armor of your protection.