Taking a Risk to Love

I'm just going to put this out on the table. I think it is a really hard to risk loving. Hard because I don't like hurting at all. I mean it...I DON'T ENJOY PAIN IN MY HEART! Look at this quote I found recently. It is from written from the wise heart of C.S. Lewis. I know enough of his story to be certain that these words are from his heart--a heart that experienced pain and joy. A heart that risked to love.

"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 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 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 Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all dangers and perturbations of love is Hell." The Four Loves

I've been thinking about getting another hamster for my classroom. I actually have had to talk myself through the death of that "future hamster" because I've had to see two previous ones die. I catch myself thinking, "Geez, it's just a hamster! Get a grip!" But the truth is, I can't get a grip on a heart that is beating with something eternal--love. Lewis is right...even caring for an animal is risky!

I've been really sad thinking about Melisa, my foster daughter of two years. She had another birthday last Saturday. The 10th one that passed without me being able to let her know that I really care. Ten years ago, she left my home and told me she didn't want me to contact her. That's a decade of broken heartedness. In fact, when she left, she took a part of my heart with her. Ouch. I'll get that piece of my heart back in heaven?

I am currently grieving the death of a friendship. My dear friend did not die. No, just the friendship. It is pretty fresh in my life. It has made me question whether anything that I found valuable about the experience of that friendship and what I found delightful about her as a person was even real. My heart, beating with the eternity of love, HAS to believe that it was all real.

I can't get a grip on my heart and make it stop loving. Make it stop risking. And that is a good thing.