Love. It's worth the risk.

As I think about the relationships in my life, some have been life long, while others were there for only a season.  Each of  them played a part in who I have become.   I may never know why some relationships ended. 

It helps to look at the impact that was made on my life during the happy times.   Some relationships were filled with betrayal and pain.  As I look back I can see that growth took place in my own life as I learned to deal with those times.

Broken relationships leave me with a choice — to become bitter or better.  Bitterness destroys me and leaves the person I was hurt by unscathed.  There really is no choice but to forgive.  I’ve learned that there are times when people hurt me but their motives were otherwise.  Sometimes my perception of the words and actions of another eclipse the motives of their heart.  It helps to try to look at the situation through their eyes and then realize I need to go past it.   I know I will grow through each relationship and the influence it has on my life.

Love is definitely a risk.  Love requires honesty and trust and vulnerability. Love shows us who we really are – both at our best and at our worst.  Love holds up a mirror, but it does not show the whole picture.  If we’ve been hurt by love, it’s easy to believe that everything we saw, everything that was said about us it true.  But it’s not. 

There’s more to our story than that. Love can be a wonderful teacher, a balm, a safe place, a restorer.  When love goes sour it can shatter much more than our hearts.  The hardest thing in the world is picking yourself back up after a heartache.  If we’re going to love again we have to learn from what went wrong and then leave it in the past.  Loving again means forgiving, letting go and then moving forward despite the pain.  It may feel like the end of the world when love walks away, but the world actually keeps spinning.Love is always a risk, but it is not always dangerous.   The choice we have is to love again or spend life alone.  It’s rarely easy, but love is always worth the effort. In what ways have you risked by loving again?