We all start like baby feet: tender, soft and innocent. But this world hardens us with its strains.

Read: Ezekiel 36:26 & Psalm 95:6-8 & Hebrews 3:7-15

I love to walk around in my bare feet. I always, always have.

Of course, there is a price to pay for shoelessness, and I pay that price.

A few mornings ago I was sitting on the floor finishing my quiet time when my little sweetness stumbled in—still mostly cloaked in sleep. Don’t you love a puffy face on a three year-old? She fell into my lap and I wrapped both arms around the ball of her to love her into alertness. I began to rub the soles of her feet. They are no longer tender like that of a baby. They have toughened a little. Although there’s the well-worn “smooth as a baby’s bottom” simile, I have always thought the skin of a baby’s foot is most delicate and perfect. So it was disconcerting to discover one more way my littleness of a girl is no longer a baby.

Life can sometimes to do that to us, huh? Toughen us. Harden us. Make us calloused. Closed.

That can be a super dangerous condition for our marriages. Life on this planet offers a daily buffet of hardening agents. Financial strain. The demands of parenting small children. Chaotic schedules, ailing parents, diverging interests, ambition and job-related stresses.

But God wants to keep our tenderness intact. In fact in Ezekiel 36:26, He promises to give us new hearts if we find ourselves in need of such an exchange. So, “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts” (Psalm 95:7-8).