"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken" - C.S. Lewis
Risk. Love involves risk. It means laying your heart on the line. It means being vulnerable and open to another. It means showing the best parts of you and sharing the worst of you. It means facing the fear and anxiety that comes with sharing your life with another. It may mean love unrequited. But it also may be the the greatest gift of one's life. So I say better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
I wish it were that easy to open ourselves to the risk that love involves. I wish I could literally shake some people and tell them "you are loved. PERIOD". I wish my love could just permeate the hearts and souls of another with a simple touch. But all too often the walls of hurt, the walls of pride, the walls of bitterness, the walls of resentment seem to creep up and love is shattered before it ever even gets an opportunity to grow.
C.S. Lewis goes on to say in The Four Loves, "if you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket/coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket -safe, dark, motionless, airless (alone) - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."
Oh my heart aches with that statement. How many hearts I've experienced with this very disease. This idea that if they just cut everyone off, then they'll be fine, they won't be hurt, they won't ache for someone to love and be loved - to be fully known and loved despite our shortcomings. And in the process of guarding themselves from love, they will lose all feeling... which is quite often the goal. And numbness sets in. These souls end up 'going through the motions' of life, never experiencing the incredibly beautiful, challenging, fulfilling bond that is love for another.
And that's the crazy part. The more you love, the more you are free, the more you grow, the more you LIVE. Life begins to fill with color, with joy, with... well, life. And suddenly the dark, solemn days of loneliness and hiding are gone. Freedom sets in. The chains of oppression, depression, independence, and loneliness are broken.
"Although vulnerability will often include pain, precluding vulnerability also leads to pain. And, unlike being vulnerable, turning in on yourself and shrouding yourself in protective armor cannot lead to happiness – only bitterness and more pain..."
Sheltering oneself from sharing their heart, their soul, their dreams, their passions, their life with another only causes pain, in the long run. We're made for relationship. It's innate within us. And to deny that fact is absurd and absolutely detrimental to our overall wellbeing. We were created to love God and to love one another. Period. That's our deepest need and our highest calling. Denying this need, this calling, is practically, denying one's very existence.
"Opening up doesn’t mean burdening someone with your struggles and problems. But, rather, it means not hiding the incredible beauty of your soul... true love is found in listening to another person, and in turn opening up to them. Allowing yourself to share your heart with another broken human being." Please don't let the opportunity to love and be loved ever pass by. Because I can guarantee that the risk is worth it, everytime.
Dear readers, I leave you with this: You are cherished. You are genuinely cared for and pursued. You are valued. You are precious to the Most High (and to me). You are beautiful in your brokenness. You are remarkable despite the efforts to hide. You are wonderfully made and your vulnerability is the key to your freedom.
You, yes, YOU - are LOVED!
Period.
No strings attached. No proving needed. No striving necessary.
"I. Love. You."
No comments:
Post a Comment