When confronted with a situation that makes us feel sad or overwhelmed with grief – we many times say our heart aches. When we loose a loved one – we say our heart aches. You may experience that feeling in your chest that grabs your emotions and many time will bring tears to your eyes before you have a chance to put them in check. Have you ever heard anyone say their brain aches when confronted with something emotional? A lot of emotion can cause a headache over time, but not instantaneously.

When we think about memory we generally associate this with our brain. It has the ability to hold our past thoughts and experiences. We can recall them and add them to something new that has happened. We can analyze and rationalize our thoughts.

What Causes our heart to ache?

Several years ago I read a true story about a young girl. It has been a while but I will do my best to tell it as close as possible to how I understood it. She was sick and in desperate need of a heart transplant.  The parents of this young girl were notified one day that their daughter needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible. A young girl had died and her heart was a match for their daughter and it was in transport to the hospital. They rushed her to the hospital, the surgery was performed and she received the heart giving her new life and a bright future. This young girl never had any issues with sleeping prior to the surgery. However, after the new heart was placed in her body she started having dreams and nightmares. She kept them to herself for while but when they keep becoming more real she told her parents about them. The doctors told them that this would pass as she recovered from the surgery. But it didn’t. She would see the face of another young girl. She would see that this girl was terrified of something. The dreams continued and she would see an attacker beating this girl in her dreams and ultimately stabbing her to death. The face of the girl and the attacker were so real along with all the details of the brutal murder including names. Her parents decided to ask about the donor and found that she was a victim in a murder but no other details were made available other than the murder had not been solved. After talking to the doctors they contacted the authorities in charge of the investigation and told them about their daughter’s nightmares. They came and met with their daughter and she told them all the details of the dreams which include descriptions and details including what both the girl and the man looked like and how the murder was committed. These details were impossible for her or her parents to know anything about. The authorities took this information and were able to apprehend the attacker and with the details this young girl was able to give, the authorities were able to make a case and the attacker was sent to prison for life.

So does the heart have memory? Does it have feelings?

It has been proven that there is what they call “cellular memory” around the heart and some other major organs even though we don’t understand it well. In this case the terrifying memory was transfer to this young girl along with her new heart. You can find other examples of this with little research effort. People have had food cravings even though they did not like the food prior to the surgery.

When we say our heart aches it is very possible that this is those deep seeded memories that are not just in our mind but buried deep in our chest around our heart. Is it possible that this is where our soul resides – the core of who we are? In the Christian belief, we say that when we accept Jesus for who he is and ask for his forgiveness he will come into our hearts. He never said into our minds. We hear people say let your heart lead you in the right direction. Do what your heart tells you to do.

Many things we just take for granted. We never stop long enough to give it the thought it deserves. If God gave each of us a place in our body that can be filled with love, gratefulness and even forgiveness, maybe we need to give this some serious thought. Just maybe everything that has been written about God is true. Which ever side of this belief you current sit on, it is important to recognize the possible implications this brings to each of us.