Hope Without Limits

Ever felt “love me, love me, love me!”?

Who doesn’t want to be loved?  The catch is to be loved you have to be vulnerable.  People around you can be offering you love and extending love to you, but if you are protecting your heart to keep it from being hurt or being hurt again, i.e., you cannot let yourself feel the feelings you have for a person because if you love them that much they have the power to hurt you — then the love that is being offered to you just bounces off that shield of protection you’ve placed around your heart.  Bummer. 😦

Did you every consider when the people we love don’t give us love in ways we genuinely need maybe they can’t give you what you need because they don’t have it, not they are withholding it, they just don’t have it to give?  Everybody is broken in some way, and that brokenness seems to become even more apparent in the way we are able to show love to and receive love from one another.

Is isolating your heart to keep it “safe” such a winning deal?

In order to receive all the love that you want, you have to allow yourself to be vulnerable.  That means you can get hurt. But, it also means your heart is free to receive the love that is being extended to you.  The question I asked God was how can I live like this?  His answer was “you can’t live and not be vulnerable, that is just existing”. If I could, I would insert tears here because that was my response.

He does it every day.  He puts his heart out there and loves us every day unconditionally, passionately even though He knows we are broken and can’t love him back the way He would like to be loved.  He knows how it feels.  The Creator of All has made Himself vulnerable to us!  He has also promised to never leave us (Heb 13:5) so when we experience the hurt side of vulnerability he is right there with us to help us.

Or as C.S. Lewis described it:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.  Wrap it 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, impenetrable, irredeemable.  To love is to be vulnerable.”

So it is our choice.  Do you want to accept that gift this Christmas, the gift of vulnerability? It contains within it a world of life and love … and risk … but it is oh so worth it.