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This is the Revised and Updated Version of the former Reclaiming Your Heart: A Journey Back to Laughing, Loving and Living. I taught a lesson years ago called “When a Heart Shuts Down”. After I taught it I said, “If I could only teach one lesson for the rest of my life this would be it.” Because it really is my story. I was so shut-down for so many years. I had lost my voice, my laughter, my dreams. I was a shell of a person. The jolt and trauma of my divorce forced me to confront my dead heart. It was fight for it or die and I wasn’t ready to die. So I fought. Hard. And what came out of that fight was a beautifully alive heart.
What does a shut-down heart actually look like? Not the obvious kind, the everyday kind. The closet you hide in. The opinions you stopped voicing. The dreams you tucked away so quietly you forgot they were ever yours. Denise opens with her own story and walks you into yours, because the journey starts with seeing where you actually are.
A reclaimed heart is not a finished product. It is a heart that has been given back its capacity to feel, to engage, to love, to risk. Denise sets the foundation for what Scripture says about the heart and why guarding it (Proverbs 4:23) is not a suggestion. It is survival.
Yes, golf. Denise tells the Pebble Beach story, and she means it as more than a metaphor. The course teaches you something about playing the next shot instead of the last one. About listening to the right Caddy. About refusing to walk off the course just because the round started ugly.
The Four Rs. Recognition. Repentance. Reflection. Relationship. These are the tools that show up in every chapter that follows, because every shut-down heart gets reclaimed the same way. Not through trying harder. Through honesty, surrender, the Word, and people who walk it with you.
The lie underneath: the way God made me isn’t enough. If you have spent your life being the version of yourself that gets approval, this is the chapter that names what you have been doing and why. Denise traces the performing heart from Genesis 3 to the dress codes of her childhood denomination to the designer clothes she wore while she was dying inside.
The lie underneath: I’m afraid I’ll be hurt again. The friend at forty wondering if it will ever happen for her. The young father whose career didn’t unfold the way he believed it would. The daughter whose mother never wanted her. Denise validates the weight of disappointment with Scripture (Proverbs 13:12, Proverbs 17:22) and walks you through what to do with a hope that keeps getting deferred.
The lie underneath: God isn’t big enough to handle this, so I need to. Denise is honest about her own planning, her own grip, her own attempts to force outcomes she could not actually control. Reclaiming this heart means trusting God enough to let Him write a story you wouldn’t have written.
The lie underneath: I’m afraid I won’t get it right. When the church becomes a weapon. When legalism replaces relationship. When the words we throw at others (and at ourselves) become the bars on the cage. This chapter names what criticism is actually doing inside of us, and how the gospel breaks it.
The lie underneath: I’m really no good. Denise tells the story of the Sunday School teacher who recognized her former student in a strip club. She tells her own story of being a second wife, of the word stepmom, of how shame fogs a sunrise. Then she walks you to Hebrews 12:2, where Jesus despised the shame for the joy set before Him. The joy was us.
The lie underneath: they’ll get away with the wrongs they did to me. Denise didn’t plan to write this chapter. Her husband Philly walked into the closet one night and named himself an angry heart, and the chapter wrote itself the next morning. Anger is not the enemy. A heart that lives in anger is. This is the difference.
The lie underneath: it’s all on me. Isaiah 40 says those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. Denise walks you into what waiting actually looks like for the woman whose plate has been full for so long she forgot she was allowed to set it down. Saying no is not selfish. It is essential.
The lie underneath: I’m just afraid. Denise points out that “do not be afraid” appears more than any other command in Scripture. God isn’t telling us to never feel fear. He is telling us not to let fear move in and live with us. This chapter is for the heart that has been white-knuckling life for so long it forgot peace was an option.
This is not where the journey ends. It is where it begins to look like something. Denise gathers the tools, the truths, the Scriptures, and the testimony of years lived on the other side of a shut-down heart, and hands them to you for the road ahead.
You have read every “live your best life” book and still feel like a shell of yourself.
You can name the moment your heart started to shut down, and you have never known how to open it back up.
You have built a life that looks fine from the outside and feels empty on the inside.
You have walked through divorce, loss, betrayal, abuse, or a long grind of disappointment, and something inside you went quiet.
You are tired of performing. You are tired of pretending. You are tired of being tired.
You want to lead a Bible study, life group, or book club through something that actually moves people instead of moving them around.
You are not ready to keep living shut down.
Your heart is worth fighting for.
What is Reclaiming Your Heart about?
It is about the eight ways our hearts shut down, and the journey back from each one. Denise walks through the performing heart, the disappointed heart, the controlling heart, the critical heart, the shamed heart, the angry heart, the weary heart, and the fearful heart. Every one of them has a lie underneath it, and every one of them can be reclaimed through what she calls the Four Rs: Recognition, Repentance, Reflection, and Relationship.
Is this book only for women?
No. The stories Denise tells are her own, and the writing voice is warm and personal, but the eight shut-down heart patterns are not gendered. Her husband Philly walks through this material alongside her, and the book has been used by men, women, couples, and mixed groups. The angry heart chapter, in particular, was written after Philly named himself in it.
Is this a Bible study?
The book itself is not formatted as a Bible study with weekly questions and homework. It is the foundational book that the Bible study materials are built on. If you want the structured group experience, pair this book with the Reclaiming Your Heart Participant Guide and the video series. Many groups read a chapter a week from the book and use the Participant Guide and video to discuss it together.
Do I need to have been through a divorce or major trauma for this book to be for me?
No. The jolt and trauma of Denise’s divorce was the doorway into her own shut-down heart, but a heart can shut down from a childhood wound, a hard marriage, a soul-draining job, a long stretch of disappointment, or a slow erosion you never named. If something inside you has gone quiet, this book is for you.
Is this the same as the older Reclaiming Your Heart: A Journey Back to Laughing, Loving, and Living?
This is the revised and expanded edition. Denise rewrote and added to the original to reflect years of additional ministry, the work of Reclaiming Hearts Ministries, the Weekend Experiences, and what she has continued to learn about the heart. If you read the original years ago, this is worth reading again.
How is this book best used in a small group setting?
Many groups read one chapter per meeting and use the Participant Guide questions and video lesson together. The book naturally divides into the introductory chapters (1 through 4), the eight shut-down heart chapters (5 through 12), and the closing chapter on living with a reclaimed heart. Some groups go straight through. Others use the eight heart chapters as a standalone series.
More from Denise: Reclaiming Your Heart Participant Guide | What In The World? Bible Study | Weekend Experience
