love is risky business

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be rung and possibly 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 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. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."-C.S. Lewis

This quote gets me every time. In being pretty much perpetually single, this quote gets me at my core. It reminds me of something my college roommate once told me. She said that it made her kind of mad that I rarely dated anyone, or not really at all in college. This bewildered me. Why would she be upset that I didn't date? It was my decision, and to me it seemed to be something that I was withholding from myself in a sacrificial way. Not in a spiritual way but the dating pool was just something I pulled myself out of. I was going to sit this game out. I was fine with this decision until she brought it up. She went on to say that when you pull yourself out of the dating pool for however long, it's a selfish decision. In my head, I was shocked. Of all things, I did not think not-dating was a selfish decision. She went on to say that we learn and grow so much from being in relationship with people, especially in dating relationships and that I could grow so much from dating, that I had so much to give to others through relationship. She told me that in a way, I was depriving others from the experience of growth. That got to me. All of a sudden the coin had flipped and it wasn't only about me. Ha, what a realization..the world actually doesn't revolve around me. When she brought this up, it wasn't a huge long discussion. It was more like a brief mention in conversation, but it definitely stuck with me and I find myself coming back to it more and more.

We are created to be in relationship, to be known and to know others. I haven't been single all these years because I don't want that. I've always wanted that and it comes back to the C.S. Lewis quote, "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be rung and possibly broken". Love requires risk and that's the part I'm not so good at.

I'm resting in the Love that casts out all fear
let this soul learn to trust
to know its loved
and feel its worth
let my love be fearless.

Seasons of Change

This past year and past few weeks have been a time of change and transition for myself and so many of my friends. I am reminded over and over that nothing stays the same. We grow up. We move out of our parent’s homes. We move closer to friends. We move away from friends. We are working our way through life meeting the new and leaving the old behind. We are in a continual process of being and becoming. Rollo May said, “In human beings courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible.” We need to be courageous in the process of letting go and handing ourselves over to change and becoming who we are meant to be.

The phrase, “letting go” has been a loaded phrase for me ever since I was a little girl. I never wanted to “let go”. I never wanted things to change.

-I refused to believe my dog would never return after we hadn’t seen him in days. I wasn’t ready to let go.

-Year after year, my mom would make every attempt to get me to throw away my old toys and sentimental keepings. Every year I would plead to keep them, holding on to stuffed animals, birthday cards, and love letters. I wasn’t ready to let go.

-When I left for college, I clung to my friends at home, desperate for the familiar. I would go home any chance I could to be with them.

-After each of my summers in Malawi, I dreaded saying goodbye. The second I set foot on African soil, I was already clinging to hellos and sighing at the thought of goodbye.

-In moving into my studio, I had to get rid of things because it wouldn’t all fit in such a small space. I struggled in choosing what to keep and what to let go. There is security in stuff.

-In my own spiritual and emotional world, I have a plethora of things to let go of. I’ve packed them up and sit upon them, wondering when I will be ready to let them go.

In any season of change, there is letting go, a process of becoming. I find myself holding onto ‘how it was’ because it provides a sense of comfort. There is nothing comfortable about change and growing. It hurts to grow and it’s easier to cling to what you know than to reach out in faith for what could be. There is safety in what we know and fear in what we do not. There is a fear of letting go. As I experience change and transition alongside so many friends and strangers, I am praying that we’ll be able to let go of our fears and embrace this time of growing and becoming. That with each step of faith we would grow in courage. And even in our moments of feeling alone, that we would know deep within our bones that we are never alone. We are kept in the hands of one who will never let us go.

Jumbled thoughts on love

Forgive me if this doesn’t make the most sense. It’s been a while since I’ve written and I’m also coming off a crazy long day at the coffee shop, so this one could be a jambalaya of sorts. I’ve been thinking this afternoon about being known and loved. How everyone longs to love and be loved. How everyone IS loved but they don’t often know it or don’t believe it. How so many love those who don’t love them back. I find myself thinking about unrequited love pretty often actually. It’s heart-wrenching to think about, yet my thoughts wander that direction, drawn to those thoughts like a moth to the flame.

Wouldn’t love be so easy if everything was cut and dry? If we just made deals and kept them. If those we chose to love, chose to love us in return. If we promised to love and never leave and then kept those promises in the end. Remember how crushes and “dating” played out in elementary school? When we would send friends as messengers across the playground to test the waters of a new love interest and report back the likeliness that it would happen?

“Jill, would you go out with Ben if he asked you out?”

“…like, for sure.”

And just like that, with the assurance of a yes, Ben asks Jill to the movies. Now I reference this kind of deal-making in the times of elementary school, but really don’t we all want that same assurance currently? In college, out of college, as real life grown-ups, we all want the certainty of love and the complete absence of rejection. However, our world is far from perfect. Promises are broken. We have no absolute certainty that those who love us will continue to love us. We risk rejection everyday. Love is complicated. We hurt those that mean the world to us. We are hurt by those that mean the world to us. It takes a lot of courage and vulnerability to love these days. We all want to be protected from sadness, sorrow and rejection. There’s this great quote from the excellent book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, “You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness”. If we constantly have our walls built high and our hearts on lock-down for fear or rejection, then yes, we are doing an amazing job of protecting ourselves from sadness. But we are also doing an amazing job of protecting ourselves from happiness that we could be experiencing if we let down our defenses and let ourselves be known.

This is scary, to be fully known. I think we all struggle with being known, at least I do. It’s a balance between wanting to be known AND loved and being known AND rejected. For someone to know everything about you and reject you is a real blow, enough of a blow to want to hide away one’s true self. To have the whole of you, your core rejected, that is crushing. It reminds me of a Pedro the Lion song, “If they really knew me, they would run.” We have a deep fear that if we are known, people will turn away...

I was just talking with someone today about how love is about really knowing someone. There is this cute couple that comes into the coffee shop and we had made a comment on Henry’s shirt the other day. He was wearing a shirt with rows of commas arranged in various positions in rows across and down with the heading of Comma Sutra above them. We thought it was hilarious and perfect since he’s an editor. We congratulated Gretchen on a perfect gift for him and she told us about his perfect gift to her, special edition Travel Scrabble. He knows she loves words and travel and games. She knows his sense of humor and love of punctuation. It was sweet really. No need for diamonds and flare. They are showing their love for each other and their knowing of each other. I just loved that. When we risk real love, we are inviting others to know us and love us despite rejection. And I pray that we would all have the courage to risk and to love fearlessly.