Take Heart

There are seasons when the distance between the head and the heart feels impossibly wide. Seasons marked by burnout, numbness, and the quiet fear that we’ve lost ourselves somewhere along the way. This essay is about one phrase that carried me through such a season, take heart, and why it has become an anchor for my faith and the posture behind my writing:

I’m convinced there is no greater distance than the one between the human heart and the human mind. Or maybe that’s just me. The culture I exist in certainly seems to reinforce the idea that the heart and the head are not only different centers, but often opposed to one another. My own personal bent aligns with that notion. I tend to control and suppress my emotions, preferring instead to drown them in logic.

But what do you do when the weight of your heart cries out and your mind goes numb?

For the last season or so, I’ve been in a really intense, dark place. Looking back, the depression I experienced came on the heels of a long season of burnout. At the time, I didn’t have language for it. I didn’t know to call it depression or burnout until I started to come out the other side.

It’s only now, almost nine months later, that I’m starting to feel like myself again. I’m being reminded of who I am and how I’m wired. What a time to launch a writing career, right?

When you’re in a season like this, it’s easy to forget who you are. I started to doubt the very gifts and talents God had placed inside me—the way He wove me together. The things that once made me excited or passionate began to dim. It was in this ocean of doubt and numbness that a dear friend prayed the words of Psalm 27 over me and encouraged me to dwell in them.

"I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord." Psalm 27:13-14, ESV

Let your heart take courage.

I’m not currently versed in ancient Hebrew, but everything I’ve learned suggests that the biblical idea of the heart is far more holistic than our Western understanding. It’s not merely the place of feeling, but the core of a person’s inner life—where will, resolve, thought, and emotion converge. To let your heart take courage is not an invitation to emotional comfort, but to inner strengthening. To allow the deepest part of yourself to be steadied in God.

In the hard months, I found myself drawn to another passage of Scripture—this one from Jesus Himself.

"I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." John 16:33, ESV

These are among Jesus’ final words to His disciples, spoken in the upper room on the night He was betrayed. They were spoken to the friends He knew He would be leaving in just a few short hours. To followers who would soon become scattered, devastated, and afraid. And still, He tells them to take heart.

Not because suffering would be avoided.
Not because fear would disappear.
But because He had overcome.

John records Jesus’ words in Greek using the term tharseite (imperative from tharseō), a word meaning to be courageous or take confidence. Jesus Himself likely spoke in Aramaic, but the meaning remains rooted in the same Hebraic imagination: the heart as the center of resolve and moral courage.

So when Jesus says take heart, He is speaking in the same idiom as the Psalmist’s call to let the heart be strengthened. He is saying: let the core of your being stand firm—not because you are strong, but because I have already overcome.

The Hebrew poets waited for deliverance.
The disciples waited for the Spirit.
Today, because of both, we are invited to take heart in the face of whatever comes.

And trials will come. Burnout. Depression. Betrayal. Disappointment. Loss. Living, it turns out, is not for the faint of heart.

Courage is critical: not simply called upon as situations demand, but relational.

Jesus didn’t speak the words take heart as a distant teacher. He spoke them as a friend. Earlier in that same conversation—during that same upper-room farewell—He tells His disciples that He no longer calls them servants, but friends.

We are called friends. Friends because of His love for us and His presence with us. He has overcome the world, but He does not leave us behind. He promises to be with us—to face suffering with us. Because sometimes the distance between our head and our heart is vast, and the seasons between joy and sorrow can feel deeply lonely.

This is what I want my writing to feel like.

Honest, but hopeful.
Helpful, but not prescriptive.
Present, rather than offering quick fixes.
Empathetic, but still capable of surprise and delight.

Like a true friend.

A friend who will point you toward courage in the chaos. Because our world is full of profound tensions: truth and grace, beauty and brokenness, healing and pain, heart and mind. They can exist without one another, but often they sharpen one another—and it’s in that space where the quiet, courageous decision to take heart lives.

In trying to describe this kind of courage, I can put it no better than one of my favorite stories does.

“Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?” he heard his own voice saying, small and far away.

“That is the only time a man can be brave,” his father told him.

— George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones (1996), Chapter 1, “Bran.”

There will be trouble in this world. But we are invited to face it together.

Take heart, friend. He has overcome the world.

-bri rosely

I first shared these thoughts with my self-titled Substack readers and wanted to give them a permanent home here.