65: How to Avoid Heart Attack

Wellness Series

Health is expressing emotions in ways that communicate what you are feeling to others^1.

I have not only witnessed, but also read that most patients in hospitals who have suffered heart attack, or have high blood pressure and gastrointestinal ‘pains’ are those who have trouble forgiving others whom they feel have ‘sinned’ against them.

Emotions are the expression of the heart. They are strong feelings we get as a reaction to what is seen, heard, tasted, touched or smelled.  Emotions reflect our response to how we understand our environment and the people in it.  And, emotions indicate whether or not we’ve accepted an event or have rejected an event.

Mr. Enoch was a great friend of the Appiah family for so many years; they called him ‘Uncle’.  Then, suddenly, he stopped coming round to visit.  Of course, the children asked their parents why Uncle hadn’t come by for some time.  Father never replied.  Their mother always gave a big, “humph” and told her eight and ten-year-olds to never mind their uncle.  “Never mind Uncle?”

After finishing his final year at university, eight-year-old Stephen now twenty-eight, looked into the crowd as he walked across the stage to receive his Ph.D. certificate, and lo and behold, he caught the image of . . . “Uncle!”  Overjoyed and annoyed, two emotions colliding and crashing, he respectfully greeted and asked him, “Why?”  With tears in his eyes, he had no words to say to his ‘nephew’.  So there it remained, a relationship riddled with unanswered questions.

In psychology, there is a notion, or theory called gestalt which describes the human mind as needing to ‘see’ or ‘hear’ the whole picture, story, idea, etc. before it can completely understand or totally comprehend what’s going on.  Without a complete ‘picture’, the human mind desperately tries to fill in the holes.  These holes can be filled with either good or bad conclusions, or thoughts.  If filled negatively, it only adds to the problem and magnifies it with emotional bitterness—anger and disappointment at being treated unfairly.  If filled positively, it can be overlooked, or accepted, and forgiven.

On a visitation to a hospital, I met Stephen, thirty years later, at fifty-eight, a patient in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) ward where the critically (seriously) ill patients are kept under strict observation and care.  I asked him, “Sir, so sorry for your unexpected first heart attack.  What do you think could be the reason for it?”  After trying to explain in the natural logic of man—lack of exercise, eating fatty foods, overworking to keep the family going, etc.—I asked, “Is there anyone you feel bitter against that you have not forgiven?”

It was in his silence that he spoke volumes.  The heart is the seat of the soul.  We are emotional beings, we feel.  And, no matter how much we pretend not to be affected, all human beings are affected by what we hear, see, touch, taste and smell, whether good or bad. 

by Kenya Barris

Being healthy is our ability to speak out about how we feel, especially to those who hurt us.  This is called communication—talking to folks about what’s troubling you on the inside instead of trying to create the missing pieces and getting the bigger picture to the puzzle all wrong.

For some of us, it’s easy to tell others how we feel, but we do it to make them feel equally bad.  That is not communication.  Communication is the exchange of ideas in an atmosphere of reconciliation—wanting to mutually understand how certain words and actions affect the other person or people.

For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross (Colossians 1:19-20).

The Bible teaches a lot about reconciliation because that is what Jesus died for, so that we, sinful man, can be forgiven and reconciled to God, our Father.  This reconciliation cannot be done if we do not have the mind of Christ working in our heart as the Holy Spirit.  Without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit there is no true forgiveness. 

We can say, “I forgive you”, but still hold onto the pain of the insult or tragedy.  It is only the Holy Spirit, alive and overflowing in our heart, who can truly help you to forgive, and then let it go out from your heart for good.  Yes, like a scar after a cut to our physical body, we will still have the memory (a psychological-emotional scar) of the pain, but we won’t allow that memory to fester again into bitterness.  That memory, if given over to the Holy Spirit, will become our mark of victory, our testimony, our crown at the end of our godly race toward heaven.

Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled (Hebrews 12:14-15).

Yes, it may be difficult to ‘talk’ to some folks because you respect them as elders.  Pray on the matter; give it to God with every detail.  Leave nothing out.  If your heart is contrite (sincere and humble), God will meet you and give you a way to settle your emotions with anyone who has hurt you.  But you still must express your emotions by ‘talking’ what you feel with an attitude of wanting reconciliation.  If reconciliation cannot be met after you express emotions, you must do a hard thing: Forgive anyway and let the person go out of your heart.  If not, bitterness will attack it.

© 2020 by Patience Osei-Anyamesem. All rights reserved.  Published by The Liight In Me Enterprise.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior written permission of the publisher.  The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews or other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Unless otherwise stated, all scripture quotations are from The New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.  Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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1.     Travis, J. (1977). The Wellness Workbook. Mill Valley, CA, USA: Wellness Resource Center.

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