risk

"Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or 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. To love is to be vulnerable."
C. S. Lewis

I have friends who are afraid to love. They have been hurt and want to avoid being hurt again at all costs. They think that it is safest to not love at all. They keep others at arm’s length.

I understand the fear. But what they don’t see is that to choose to keep your heart closed off to hurt means you keep your heart closed off to joy. Our hearts are not capable of only letting in good things. When we decide to keep out hurt we keep out joy.

Loving others involves risk. It always has and it always will. Humans aren’t perfect. There are those that will hurt us every chance they get and we need to able to identify who they are and set up appropriate boundaries. But, there are others (and I think there are far more of these!) who will love us well, even if imperfectly. All of us love imperfectly. I do, you do…all of us do. If people never took a chance on me because of what others had done to them, I’d have no one in my life.

Be willing to risk. God created us to live in community and not as loners. Risk….risk being yourself with others, risk letting others in, risk being real….risk being hurt. Know that whatever comes your way, God is able to walk you through it.

Grace and peace,
Deb

Photo by epSos.de http://www.flickr.com/photos/epsos/4376727123/