Love is messy; do it anyway

Okay...now that I have your attention. .... Loving people is a risky thing to do, a painful thing to do, at times, a discouraging thing to do, a disappointing thing to do...but we need to do it anyway.
How boring and unfulfilled life would be if we didn't risk loving others! How meaningless life would be if we didn't allow ourselves to love people even though disappointment, lost, and pain is involved ...especially.....when we love and love well.

Right now I feel there are so many people in my life whose hurts effect me. I am unable to forget their pain and problems; it just eats me up and makes me grieve. I am glad I have compassion and empathy for them, but God has to toughen me up. Perhaps this is what God is doing in this stage of my life... toughening me up.....maybe this is why I have friends who ...after 2 years....seem unable to get a foreign government to allow them to bring a 9 year old orphan home as their son....maybe this is why I found out that two of my friends are being physically and emotionally abused by their husbands...maybe this is why my 11 year has lost 2 pets to natural causes in 4 months.......my aunt died (a woman I really, really loved)....broken marriages all around... illnesses (cancer, intestinal infections), relatives with suicidal thoughts, two friends mourning the loss of their husbands, and a variety of other people who are hurting in various ways...... . broken spirits..... .. but I choose to love anyway.

At Aunt Jennifer's funeral, they showed several photos/ slides of her life. Many of these photos were her with Uncle Jake (her husband of many years). He died 11 years ago. She missed him deeply, but I know she is glad that she fully invested herself in him...allowing herself to love him deeply in the happy, the good times sad times....... You could see it in her smile with Uncle Jake. You could see it in how she lived even after he died.

This coming week, on October 17th, Russell and I will have our 20th wedding anniversary. I think about one of us leaving this earth prematurely because I have seen it happen at least once a year for the last 7 years or so....happening to different friends in my life. Wives and husbands...dying early. I have to be honest; that scares me..but I feel that I have loved Russell well and he has loved me well. No perfectly....but well. I feel that if God took me today or took Russell today, all would be okay because we loved well. We choose to ignore when we annoy each other and give each other extra grace. He knows that I love him even though we are as different as night and day. He knows I try to be truly interested in the things that interest him. He knows that we are friends ....and I don't regret having said Yes to him when he asked me to marry him, but this is a risk. You love much...there will be much pain. I can tell you it is so worth it. It is worth it to trust people even when they have hurt you time and time again. It is worth it to reach out to that hurting friend...even if she keeps shutting the door. It is worth trying to place the other person's needs over your own, even if they never do the same. It is easy to guard your emotions, never to let anyone in, to pretend you have no problems, to not allow yourself to grieve or hurt when others or hurting, to think of yourself first....but what a life of regret that leads to. It is worth it. I want to live a life of no regrets.

If you haven't seen this movie, Lars and the Real Girl, I recommend it...... for adults only. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0805564/
It is about a man, Lars, who feels it is too painful and risky to love real people so he has a delusion that his blow-up doll is a real person and he emotionally loves her (head out of the gutter... he doesn't "love" her physically . Funny, funny movie...but lots of truth on the risk of loving others.

Love is messy....do it anyway.