The Risk of Love

If I believe greater love and authenticity are needed in this world, how could I not give to where it is lacking?

A little transparency here…

I would LOVE to gatekeep myself, only allowing in those trustworthy to care for me, but

I believe in the selflessness and unconditionality of love.

Love goes beyond what it can give me and extends in purpose to create beautiful hope and truth in others. 

In return, my sacrifice to love develops a new grace in me.

Love transforms, and I have seen its beauty and power in my own life. Thus, I desire the love that has been graciously poured into me to overflow into others.

 

Using wisdom and setting boundaries to guard my heart is absolutely necessary, yet I am learning that there will be times when love will require me to risk my feelings to walk in its purpose.

So, though past trauma has caused me to hesitate to sacrifice in this way, I will remain trusting of God's care when He commands me to love anyway. 

I will choose to be kind and love intensely no matter the cost because I believe that God will never allow anything done in His love to be in vain.

Therefore, I will seek God and learn how to love in wisdom while also becoming unafraid to love in the riskiest of moments. For that is exactly how Christ has loved us.  

- lr

To Believe In Good

The closest people to me can tell you that I lived in a dream as a child. 

I chased what could be with a knowing that it soon would be. 

I dreamt big and believed that to be optimistic meant to live in a whimsical illusion complete with all things imagined. 

I saw that people’s lives should be much more than they settled for. Therefore, I dreamt that mine would be the exception. 

The life of this dreaming child was beautiful. 

She found a sparkle and a hope in everything. 

She never worried about the worst-case scenarios or the possible painful betrayals because she knew it would all add up to a happily ever after, just like in the movies. 

She never settled to see life as it currently existed; instead, she saw life as beautiful as it could be.

She was innocent, and life in her eyes was just as clay, simply waiting to be molded into the greatest thing one can imagine.

This changed as I grew up. 

Life was unhesitant to show me that some dreams don’t come true, and even worse, some actually morph into nightmares. 

I knew good and evil, but I was shocked into awareness when the same good I trusted and found happiness in over time became the same stone that shattered my heart. 

I am traumatized and even now find myself consumed with fear that all good results in disaster. 

Clouded by such horror in and around our lives, we often forget that good remains because God remains. 

I am eager to deny this truth out of the bitterness, fear, and sorrow of my experiences.

Yet, to not believe that good exists despite the difficulties means to unjustly imprison our life when Christ has deemed it free in Him. 

I have viewed the disappointments of my life as a puncture to my hope, leading me to rely on myself to safely guard my heart. 

However, I have learned recently that God views the same disappointments as another way to build my faith and display the depth of His love for me. 

And in that is such a beautiful good I fail to realize.  

I want the courage to be like a child again, walking into situations with the hope and belief that good will triumph because God is above it all. 

This time, this thinking will not come with delusions but with genuine trust in a faithful God. 

It may not be the same childhood dream I had, but it is a new hope found in the One who, in time, makes all things good.

- lr