Snapped!

Have you ever come across someone you knew who committed an unusual or unlawful act towards themselves or others and it was a huge surprise to you?  Why were you so surprised? Maybe it’s because you didn’t think that person had it in them to do what they did in the first place. The truth is, we almost never see it coming because we only see and care about who people are from a surface level. We believe who people present themselves to be as truly who they are.  However, it can be quite difficult to see them any differently if they’re only giving us the part of themselves they want us to see.

Throughout the week, my husband likes to read the newspaper to me while he’s getting ready for work and he always comes across stories of seemingly normal people who committed some of the most obscene acts like a star high school football player who abruptly commits suicide without any warning or someone who had uncontrollable road rage and actually jumps out of their car to fight a stranger. Sometimes the article has a quote from someone who knew the offender personally and they appear to be just as shocked as the rest of the world. The person who knew the offender sometimes says things like, “That doesn’t sound like the person I know! No one knew he was having issues! The person I know is loving and kind; they were great parents or an awesome coworker and would have given you the shirt off their back!” Sometimes, if the offender has a chance to be interviewed or leaves behind pertinent information, we can get a glimpse of what was taking place in their heart and we often find issues that had been brewing long before the act ever was committed.

What does it mean to snap?

Although majority of us see someone who snaps, as a person who just “lost it” over something trivial and ended up committing a violent and thoughtless act, most psychologists would probably see it as a “psychological build up” of unresolved issues that became too heavy for the mind to hold. Consequently, the person acts out in fits of rage or anger towards themselves or others. I believe this is true but I would like to broaden this term to include a person who acts out against their moral conscience in any way in order to find relief from the weight of what was internally binding him or her. With this term being extended, many (if not all) of us would fit into the category of potentially “snapping”. Therefore, I believe that snapping can simply be the outcome of where your heart leads you in order to find its relief.

Imagine a net that has held many different kinds of heavy objects in it for a long time. On top of that, more things continue to build on top of what is already in it. After a while, the heavy matter will eventually start to weaken the net, causing parts of it to thin out and begin to unravel. Not knowing exactly when but if left unnoticed and if the pile up continues, the net will eventually be down to its last string causing it to snap or break. The objects that fall out first will less likely be the things at the top of the net but will probably be the things that were buried the deepest.

This net is like our heart in the sense that it was never meant to retain issues, moreover, an overload of issues. Yet when we accumulate and hold on to large amounts of unresolved sin and issues in our life it has a tendency to weigh the heart down. This weight slowly causes each strand of sanity, dignity and uprightness to unravel and finally snap into doing things we would never dream of doing before and most of the time it is due to those unresolved issues that has been sitting all the way at the bottom of our hearts.

I mentioned in my book, Lord, Make Me Good Ground, that by nature, our hearts are filled with the corruption of this world but it was never meant to hold such damaging stock. When we become born again, our priority becomes the maintenance of our hearts because it is the home to where all things (good or bad) begin. Therefore, it should be a routine of ours, to recognize and turn over every heavy weight that binds our hearts. If we do not confront and deal with the hidden sin in our hearts that bore and shaped us, it will continue to pile up, slowly causing us to unravel and eventually lead to an unexpected break.

My challenge to myself and to you is to do a “routine maintenance check” on your heart and search for what could potentially cause us to snap.