Choosing to Love, Despite Fear

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” – Rumi

Several years ago I dated a guy who was so afraid to get hurt again, that he never gave himself emotionally in a relationship. The best he gave was a shell of himself. Most women accepted that, and many didn’t even notice he was showing up incomplete.  It prompted me to ponder: 

Why be so afraid?

So afraid that in your very avoidance of the possibility that you'll get hurt, you wind up hurting those who care about you?

I don’t think anyone wants to get hurt. I know I definitely don’t! But we do. It is life. And we emerge. We are designed by God to be resilient and able to love again.

Absolution

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians, your Christians are

so unlike your Christ.” –Mahatma Gandhi

I watched a movie that was a bit difficult for me to follow, because it rapid fired through many scenes, so you have to keep up with the characters and their stories. I’ll have to watch it again. It was stirring. It listed the 10 commandments and the story line was a demonstration of each, in a very compelling and real example of each. The movie is “I Am.”  

It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is for me to pick out and notice when someone else is being hypocritical, but when it’s me demonstrating that behavior, it may elude me until sometime down the road. The hopeful part of me hopes that eventually I see with God’s heart enough to get it, or at least as well as a child may be expected to.