Have you ever encountered someone who was really hard to
love? Who kept you at arms’ length no matter how much you tried to love them?
Sisters, there’s someone like that in my life right now. Our
sweet Lord has very clearly brought this person into my life for me to love in
a special way, but that’s not always easy.
And you know why? Because she’s broken.
And often, loving people who are really broken brings out
our own brokenness.
All too often, I want to quit. Give up. Throw in the towel.
Lord, I can’t. I know you asked me to love her, but she won’t let me in. and
when she does, she pushes me away again. It’s just too hard to love her.
And then I realize: what if the person that loved me at my
most broken had said that same thing about me? What if my fear of being hurt
and my hardness of heart had deterred her from loving me? What if she had
chosen to throw in the towel instead of pursue me with that relentless love?
If she had done any of those things that I’m so tempted to
do now, I would still be a broken, empty, hard woman.
Love bears all things, sisters, even the most broken things.
Real love does not insist on its own way or its own timing, but rather, as
Winnie the Pooh says, “Love is taking a few steps backward, maybe even more…to
give way to the happiness of the person you love.”
Maybe sometimes in love, we need to step back from what we
think love should be in order to realize what love really is.
Love is messy. And painful. And honestly, quite
heartbreaking.
But more than all of that, love is a choice. A choice to
will the good of the other person despite what might be easiest for us.
Sometimes that choice means that we have to confront our own
brokenness. Sometimes it means that we have to keep going when we want to give
up. Sometimes it means that we have to bear some pretty heavy stuff. Sometimes
it means that we have to allow our own hearts to be broken. But always it means
that we will find that all the brokenness we had to face was worth it.
Lord, cast out any
fear of painful love that exists in our hearts. Root up our own ideas of what
love should be and reveal to us what it actually is. Help us to meet the
brokenness of others with the love with which you met us. When we are
confronted with our own brokenness, help us to rejoice rather than to hide.
Increase in us the virtue of ardent charity, that we may love each person we
meet with Your love and not with our own.
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