the dangers of love

"There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it in tact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it up 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, impeneterable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell."
-Clive Staples Lewis "The Four Loves"

One of the girls in special stars had a seizure today. I was so scared. I felt so powerless as she was laying on the ground shaking.

Just a little while previous we had been playing on the playground and she was kissing my arm.

I stayed as the SVCC medics and her family came to help her. Finally she came around after receiving oxygen and laying down for almost an hour. As her family carried her exhausted body I was humbled by the reality of that family's life.

All my experience will never compare to what some families live with on a daily basis. I can't imagine what that is like to see someone you love so much in pain and being unable to alleviate it. When you love someone, especially a child, you want them to be okay, to be happy, not to go through trauma and pain. No wonder so many mouths cry, "Why God?"

Love is a very scary reality. When you open yourself to love you might be subjected to frustration, you may not be loved in return, you might see your beloved in pain, or worse you could lose them. We are fragile beings and love should never be taken lightly. It truly is a risk to love.

And to receive love? That is a risk as well--a different kind of risk--one that makes us humble and for which we must accept the grace of our lover in their choosing to love us despite our insecurities and feelings of unworthiness.

Love seems to be comprised of a dichotomy between the bravery of taking a risk and the surrender to grace.

Sometimes love is not romantic or pretty. Sometimes it is simply the hands that reach for us in our frailty and the presence that waits with us through the dark times.




If you think of it, pray for that little girl and her family.