"To love at all is to be vulnerable.
Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. 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 around with hobbies and little
luxuries, avoid all entanglements, lock it up safe in the casket or the coffin
of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will
change. It will not be broken, it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the
dangers and perturbations of love is hell."c.s.lewis in The Four
Loves
This quote.
Let me say, I hate the vulnerable word. It hurts.
It reaches deep inside me and squeezes my heart. And this quote says it
exactly.
Loving scares me. I am afraid of love. God loves
me, and He has been working in my heart. When I was in Greece this summer,
I felt His love in an almost tangible way. He answered the cry of my heart
-- that of wanting to love the people I was with. I knew I couldn't possibly
love them, in the short month I was there. But God opened my heart, and I had
the best month of my life.
Yes, I felt vulnerable. Yes, it hurt. It hurt to
see the people I love suffering, it hurt to not be able to heal them, it hurt
to leave. My heart was cracked open, and it hurt. But it was beautiful.
God is more! God is love! He fills my heart, even as love is seeping out of my
heart, and leaving my heart empty.
I am learning that to love is beautiful. To
break down your walls is freedom. To connect is the reason we are here. To
listen, to share, to care. If it weren't for love, nothing would be worth it.
Love is the reason. Love makes it worth.
Does that mean I'm not afraid any longer? I
am afraid, because love is unpredictable. I don't know what to
expect. Because loving people sometimes means doing radical, crazy things.
Things you wouldn't do on a normal basis. I am afraid, because my heart
tells me different things than my mind. My heart is alive, and feels free, but
my mind is cautioning me, be careful. And I want to follow my
heart, and feel love, and be fearless, but there is a battle going on
between that, and my mind.
Love is worth the risk.
I am trying to believe.
