Would we say no to love because it hurts?

 Would you willingly choose to do something that you KNOW is going to cause you hurt, pain, and heartache? 

Well, the answer is yes and no.

Often, when we are absolutely certain that a decision, or an action is going to give us a most piercing affliction or unsurmountable hardship, the answer is no way! Our self-preservation instincts kick in...or should kick in, ideally, right? Sometimes I wonder, though... However, there is one thing...one decision...one action...one decision to commit to an action which we willingly embrace fully knowing it will, at some point, shatter our hearts...and that is, the decision to commit to loving someone.

The reason for this seemingly irrational determination is that otherwise, choosing to say no to love would make us part of a different species...more like a piece of furniture or a kitchen appliance...an amoeba, at best.

We choose love over and over and over again regardless of how much it may hurt, because we are humans and we need love like we need air.  Love is what sustains us and gives us well-being because He who made us is Love Himself, and when He selected us to be His, that was an act of unsurpassed love that demonstrates He loved us first and at that moment, He instilled His love in us rendering us incapable of not loving despite our "better/worldly/rational" judgment and knowledge. Easy! Not mind-twisting at all, right?!

Anyway...but seriously, how else would we ever know we even have a heart if we never get it broken?

The pain we feel when our heart aches or when it is deeply pierced due to love is what reminds us that we are alive...the deeper the hurt...the stronger the love.  Losing someone who we consider only a passing acquaintance, for example, does not destroy us the way that losing a most beloved person does.  Hearing the news that something bad happened to a kid at some distant school many miles away from us, doesn't disturb us anywhere near to the way it certainly annihilates us when that kid is ours.  The distress we experience when we are aware of the hardship of people we know of through second-hand connections is not even close to the excruciating agony we feel when the hardship falls onto a dear, dear friend.

Deep in our hearts we know, the day we decide to love someone, that it will crush us if we ever lose them.  We know with absolute certainty that the instant something horrible happens to our children (even a papercut counts here) we are going to feel it worst than if it'd happened to ourselves.  We know when our dear friends go through seriously rough patches, we travel with them and experience their pain.  We know it...we feel it...we fear it.  

When we say the vows, it is for better or for worse, until DEATH due us apart.  We walk into that union knowing death will be a part of it.  When we hold our children in our arms, we know our hearts will break, just like the heart of Jesus' Mother Mary broke, because we realize our hearts don't belong to us anymore, they are in possession of the children God blessed us with.  When we first meet our best friends whether it be at a school yard during recess when we were in Kindergarten or at a small group in college either because we were paired together to do a project or we were randomly thrown together as roommates, or met at a crazy party (not that college students ever go to parties, let alone crazy ones), or at a Bible study group at the home of a Pastor on Sunday evenings when we were starting out our Christian walk...we know that someday we will journey through the valleys of the shadows of tears with our loved ones...still...does knowing all this would ever make us turn our backs and say: no...I cannot commit to loving you because I know it will one day break my heart and I cannot have that kind of pain in my life?  

Would we say "no" to love because it hurts?  

No second thoughts. No second guessing. No regrets.  Tears and all, we willingly dive into the adventure that it is to love someone because choosing otherwise would mean traversing through life empty and barely alive.  After physiological needs, the need to belong... to love and be loved, is the most basic need of humankind! So, a life devoid of love, is not much of a life at all.  And like the song says: love hurts.  It hurts, indeed.  But that's how we know we're alive. That's the human perspective.

From a Christian perspective, it works too.  Suffering is the evidence we are walking with Jesus!  Sharing the road with Christ means sharing in His sacrifice...sharing His Cross (Galatians 2: 20 and Matthew 10: 17-20). To be a part of His Glory we must be also part of His agony...that's just the way it works. Love hurts, but without love, there is no joy...there is no glory.  Therefore, we offer our suffering back to Him to participate in His Glory at the appointed time.  

The Cross is not the goal...the goal is Christ's Glory.  Heartache and agony are not the goal...the goal is joy.  May the One Who is LOVE guide us in our necessary walks through calvary so, when the time is full, we can also partake in the joy and glory of true Love.