“They tore out my heart and stomped that sucker flat,”
is the title of a book by Lewis Grizzard.
(He got the title from a country song that began with the word She.)

Grizzard tells the story of his lifelong struggle with a heart condition that resulted in surgery to correct a valve problem. He used the experience to do what he did so effectively, to make people laugh.

I’ve recently gone through the experience of open-heart surgery. The book’s title, which I had heard before, now has new meaning to me.

A week following surgery, a friend gave me a TLC telephone call, and among other things, asked if I had given any special meaning to the event. (She knows how this used-to-be-preacher is prone to do that.) Well, long awake-times that night picked up the question, What meaning do I give this torn-out-stomped-on experience?

I had learned that a nurse held my heart in her hands while the surgeon did the bypass work. Not exactly a torn-out-stomped-on thing! More like a person tenderly touching my heart for good!

The question became What touches my heart for good?
The answer came in three short phrases, all representing what has been important to me, and perhaps now will be even more so – a family to love, caring for persons, a faith to live.

Hopefully, following a couple of recovery months, I’ll have a few more years to give attention to these matters of the heart.

- Joe Elmore