"Careful Love?" No Such Thing...

Note: God has been stirring some intense ideas in mind/heart lately and I'm in the midst of developing a new post about the balance of guarding your heart vs. keeping your heart open to love. As I've been writing that post, I was reminded of a blog I wrote nearly six years ago on this same topic. Re-reading it this morning, I got fresh revelation/confirmation of some of the ideas coming in the next post. Thought I'd share...give you a preview of what's to come :)

"And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing"

- 1 Corinthians 13:2

My friend Jamie once told me a story about being in love--specifically the intense pain that one feels when love is not reciprocated.  In my naive, college-freshman mind, I questioned the authenticity of the love about which she spoke. I told her that I believed love was not truly love unless it was mutual. One-sided love, I claimed, was merely admiration. 

Needless to say, I had a huge misunderstanding about love and how this powerful force comes to flourish in one's heart.  Having known pain, hurt and disappointment from a young age, I grew into a young woman who chose (more often than not) to keep people at a distance.  In the few instances where I did make myself vulnerable towards someone else (amidst silly high school romances and college "friendlationships"), I always came away feeling ashamed of my attempts to express the deepest longings of my heart. Thus, as I sought to diligently "guard my heart" (as every good, young Christian girl is taught to do), I couldn't conceive of a more practical method than closing it off and shunning the risk that getting to know someone intimately always necessitates. Better to stay safe and "protected," than to end up hurt and rejected...

Here was the false dichotomy I created in my mind: Either I could give my heart away and choose to love when things were "just right"...or..I could take a risk and choose to love when there was no guarantee of reciprocation. Is there even a choice here? After all, the former seemed to provide a foolproof solution to heartbreak and the latter held the glaringly obvious possibility of no reward. Yet, what I didn't realize is that the possibility of no reward...in other words, risking...was the only choice I had. Because even when love is reciprocated and the situation appears idyllic, no human love is perfect. Because we are not perfect. Here on earth, love always involves risk. There is no such thing as "careful" love...

There's a brilliant line tucked slyly within the otherwise cliche script of a sappy chick flick that expresses exactly the way I felt in my younger years regarding openness to love (and my lack thereof). Today, it challenges me more than ever...

"There's a part of me that wants to let him in but then I feel myself put this wall up and I don't understand why. Maybe that's what strikes me most about [him]. That despite everything he's suffered he can still look at life in the most uncomplicated way. I've never known that kind of faith. It makes me sad that people like [him] who have lost everything can still be open to love while I, who have lost nothing, am not."

That truly is a wonderful thing--to have loved and lost, but to keep your heart open to loving again.

God is so beautifully ironic. Perhaps it is His way of redeeming my closed and scared self of my past that the Lord has placed this peculiar call on my life having to do specifically with love and honesty.  He has challenged me to live a life of vulnerability--to open up my heart, to allow myself to feel the full weight of every emotion I experience and to risk possible (surely inevitable) pain for sharing myself and loving another person in such an intense way. 

As I humbly seek to live out this challenge, I have found myself truly loving more people than I ever have before in my life.  In many ways, it is an incredible experience; living with a constant desire to serve, encourage and fight for people because of the love I have for them. Yet even now, as I sit and reflect about the people that I have come to love so deeply within this past month, I am struck with the pain of knowing that everything I feel is not necessarily mutual. And that makes my heart hurt-- a very literal aching in my chest--to know that my love is not returned with the same intensity.

In moments like these, it is very easy for me to question myself and have doubts about the nature of my feelings: "What's wrong with me?  Why do I love so intensely?  If I love people who don't love me back, did I choose the 'wrong' people to love?" 

Where did these questions come from?  I know that I am not the only one who has been challenged in this way. When relationships end, so many of us question the authenticity of the love we experienced. Staring at the shattered pieces that surround us after rejection, we suddenly feel guilty and about the nature and depth of our love. How could I have been so foolish to give my heart away? I should have guarded it better...

Blame it on the theories we unconsciously develop from movies and love songs.  Blame it on the fact that we try to put this massive, mind-bending concept of love into a box--putting time limits and restraints on it ("You can't truly love someone unless you've known them for this many months" or "You can't be 'in love' with someone who you aren't in a relationship with").  Blame it on the fact that we constantly judge other's emotions--thinking that we know better than they do if what they are experiencing is genuine.  Blame it on what you will, but I find it tragic that for so long I believed the lie that the only form of true love is a mutual love.  I am ashamed that I told Jamie that a one-sided love was not genuine.  Because perhaps being able to love someone without the promise of their love in return is the greatest example of love that there is...

This thought frees me and comforts me deeply: To know that love does not have to be reciprocated in order to be real.  And who personified this type of loving better than Jesus--a man who risked loving so passionately and freely--all the while knowing that those whom He cared for so deeply and poured His life into would abandon Him in the midst of His suffering.  Jesus could have distanced himself or chose to give away love selectively--only to those who were guaranteed to return it and make the investment "worthwhile." But He didn't. Instead, He became our most incredible example of "un-careful love"...

The greatest commandments that guide and sustain our lives can be summed up in two words: To LOVE. And to honor that command, we must push past the fear that to do so will break us. To love is to risk being hurt...but we must choose to love anyway.

Because freely and un-carefully loving is the only way to truly live...