karen fisher strikes back

This past summer i read a book that shook me deeply. the writing was beautiful and poetic, but the plot dark and aching. i recently went back over it a bit to see if it terrified me as much, and found this passage very interesting:

"She thought about the years to come, and wether she could ever bear to lose a child, why mothers were fated to dream this way. Until it seemed such dreams must play a part in hardening off the tender heart, like those chills that toughened seedlings on spring nights, by God's design: in the safety of our sleep, exposing us to the icy blasts of possibility - the unspeakable future, the unquiet past. To make us stronger in the daylight world."

I feel like this book sort of exposed me more to the "icy blasts of possibility." But I don't know that I want my tender heart to harden off. I want it to stay a soft little lump of tissue that breaks for the things that break the heart of God. I would like to stop fearing all my "what-if" scenarios though.