Risk to love.

"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. Wrap it around carefully with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, and irredeemable. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love is Hell." - C.S. Lewis The Four Loves

Love for me has always been a touchy subject. Whether it was the supposedly unconditional love of a parent or the eros love of a suitor. I had decided long ago, probably from a situation where I was rejected and in turn reacted very badly, that no one really loves you. If they say they do, they're probably just lying or they are deluded and don't actually know the true meaning of love. I in turn, built a huge wall around my heart, that I hoped would eventually become impenetrable. I took the verse that says to guard your heart always, to the extreme. My heart was not just guarded, it had a block of brick covered with cement and electric fence with a very strong current, around it. And guards that would give the American President's security team, a run for their money. Since I didn't believe in love, therefore I also could not love. I could not be vulnerable, open and sincere with the people in my life because of that fear that if they get past my heart guard, I would be broken again or they would find a reason to not love me.

When I first met God (as in my first real encounter with Him and not the with the 'religious mean God I had heard of'), He started chipping away at this wall. He could have blown it away in an instant, but I guess He decided to chip it away. For a long time, I just didn't believe, in the core of my heart, that Jesus could love me so much that all my failings, all my weaknesses and the stupid and disgusting things I had done, even with my good intentions, would be as nothing. That God loved me with an everlasting love, that compares to no other by far. It is a miracle, that which God is doing in my heart. Even with the people He has brought onto my path, in the last few years. People who have shown me not only that I can be loved but that everyone can and deserves to be loved. Seeing the depth of His mercy for me and the revelations of His love for me, is changing how I relate to people. I'm finding the need to love more, to genuinely care for people and to stop being so selfish.

I pray that as I grow in His love more and more each day, the overflow will result in me truly loving everyone I come into contact with. I will take the risk (or at least try to), to love people, knowing that I am loved by the King of the universe and to cease from being fearful.

What do you think?

From timidchristian.blogspot.com/