Thoughts I Have

Safety and Love

I want you to read the title of this chapter, and tell me if you think those two words are synonyms or antonyms. 

This is a question I've asked myself for years. 

Can I be safe when I choose to love those around me? 

When I witness broken relationships, I ask this. When I see that person guzzling mouthwash at the bus stop, or when I'm walking to school and I pass a girl about my age, clearly ditching class and smoking, I wonder about this. When I worry what my friends think of me, I wonder. 

My instinct tells me love isn't safe. Love is vulnerable; we all know that. I'd go so far as to say love will inevitably end in pain and suffering of some kind. Love is dangerous and foolish. Yet, my instinct also tells me the best thing I can possibly do is choose to love. 

I don't mean love like married-couples love. At least, not the love single people often think married people have. I mean the love married couples truly have, when they stay together. The love that goes beyond feelings and romance. Or the love you have for someone whom you are caring for, someone you sacrifice for. 

One of my favorite books (the third book in the Hawk and the Dove trilogy, if you're wondering) said something along these lines about love: You only know you are feeling love when it hurts. 

Why is it, that love in its most pure state seems so linked with suffering? 

The other day I heard a story on the radio of a famous opera singer who quit the stage rather young after her daughter had a stroke. I don't think she ever went back. That is love; what a sacrifice for the mother to make. 

Yet, love isn't just throwing yourself down at the mercy of everyone around you. 

Right?

Love doesn't mean I cater to the every desire of those around me. It doesn't mean I complacently give in no matter the cost to myself. 

I'm starting to think this chapter would have been better as bullet points. It's so hard for me to organize my thoughts on this. 

Love is when you take someone else's worries and pain and make them all your own. 

Love is when you forgive someone who has wronged you and isn't sorry yet; maybe they aren't yet capable, or maybe they don't reciprocate your love. 

Love is when you think your efforts with someone are fruitless, and you try anyways because you can't leave them alone. Even if that means you are taking responsibility on yourself and you know you will most likely fail. 

Love is when you see someone joyful, and you share their joy (especially when you are not in a happy mood yourself, and when you are perhaps jealous of them). 

Love is when you see past someone else's brokenness and see the good in them. 

Love is when you look at people who are messy and hurting and you cry for them. And then you find something to do to help them, not because you aren't messy and hurting, but precisely because you are and yet love is all that heals brokenness.

When Christ came to earth, He didn't pity us, try to console us, or just pluck us out of our mess.

He never said, "Wow, being human is pretty bad. I feel sorry for you all!"

Instead, He loved us. He became human to share everything with us. 

"He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth... He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not... He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon is was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed." (from Isaiah 53)

"The Son of God suffered unto death, not that we might be exempt from suffering, but that our suffering might be like His. Christ offers us, not a way round suffering, but a way through it; not substitution, but saving companionship" (I found this quote in The Orthodox Way).

What does Christ's love do in us, our lives, our hearts, our being?

"For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind... No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days... They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity, for the shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord, and their children with them." (Isaiah 65)

We labor through life, taking up our crosses in Christ, and Christ's infinite love heals us, allows us to love each other through Him and thus heal each other. 

But, all that happened through suffering for us. 

That's the model of love I am supposed to follow perfectly, as a Christian. 

No. Love isn't safe. Love isn't easy, concrete, simple, obviously rewarding, etc. Nor does it feel good (very often). 

If we were perfect, it would feel good, I think. If we were holy and like Christ already, it would be joyful and come naturally to us. 

Since we are broken, and those around us, we need to experience the pain and suffering. We need the hurt and struggle. 

Ok. I need to go to bed, so now I want to know what your thoughts are! 

Good night!

Please pray that I might love everyone God has put into my life. I need the prayers. :)