A Casket Heart

Love is patient, love is kind...

Love is one of the scariest things in the world.

We can be afraid of heights, spiders, monsters in our closet and under our beds, snakes, all things creepy and crawly, super-fast-stomach-turning rides at amusement parks (yes...I'm just listing my own fears here), but those are rarely the things we are truly afraid of, in the deepest corners of our hearts where we store past pain, hurt, guilt, and shame, buried amongst those memories and hidden pieces of broken life, there are our greatest fears, our deepest longings, and the things we are truly most terrified of.

For me, that often boils down, at its core, to a fear of not being loved, not being wanted.

There's fear of failure, but that boils back down to fear of not being good enough, fear of disappointing people and not living up to their expectations. There's a thought that my behaviors and words will dictate the level at which people will care about me, that their love for me will change based on whether I was "good enough" that day, that hour, in those moments.

I'm afraid. I'm terrified.

I don't want my heart to be broken.

I don't want to love people and not be loved in return, to put effort and thought and care into friendships and be told in return, "sorry, you gave your all, you shared your heart, and it wasn't good enough."

Like so many, I fear rejection. I don't care about being a little beaten up. It's okay if more shallow friendships end, if acquaintances decide they don't like me. The outer walls of my heart can stand up to poundings from a battering ram, large boulders flung from midieval catapults.

It's the deepest parts of my heart I'm afraid to show, I'm afraid to expose myself even to the possibility.

Love is the scariest thing in the world.

But what's the solution?

I've wondered this so many times. My cynical response is simply that I shouldn't let my heart out. I'll build up walls around it and not let anyone all the way in, that way when the cannons fire and the bombs go off, I'm safe.

But if you close yourself off and protect yourself, you also stop any chance of actually loving and being loved.

Love is scary, because love isn't safe.

C.S. Lewis says it better than anyone in his book, The Four Loves,

"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."

To love, to love at all, is to be vulnerable.

Just as we can't live without the anatomical purpose of a heart - ya know, pumping blood and something with oxygen and veins and arteries and all of that - we can't live without love.

Animals will choose to be with a caring, comforting, maternal figure over food or water. We need love to live.

You could choose to close your heart away, lock it up, hide it behind so many walls of stone and concrete that it ceases to be a heart.

We can't live without love. It's scary, but we can't live without it, we were created to love.

And what I've realized, too, is that if my heart of hearts belongs to the right person, I can never truly be hurt.

When the deepest parts of your heart, the bits you are most afraid to let out, belong to someone who never fails, someone who will never abandon, never hurt you, then you are safe. You're safe to love uninhibited because no matter how many battering rams break through those walls, no matter how many cannons are fired, the part that is scariest to have hurt is completely safe in the hands one who will never leave.

And my heart belongs to Jesus. My truest heart is safe, because it belongs to someone who loves me more than I can ever fathom.

Love is still scary. Rejection is terrifying, I'm afraid to be hurt, afraid of not being good enough. But those fears pale in comparison to the security of True Love.

Love is scary, but its better than closing your heart off until it ceases to be a heart at all.

Loving is living, living is loving.