choosing to love

"Do not hesitate to love and to love deeply. You might be afraid of the pain that deep love can cause."

~Henri Nouwen, Love Deeply


The anguish of loss and rejection produces a crossroads, and that is the choice between a bitter refusal to love again- or- to stand straight up in my pain and let the soil I stand upon become richer and better capable to be life-giving.

By choosing the risk to love, my heart has grown deeper and wider, and in all my faltering maturity of fits-and-starts I find there is no end to the wellspring of genuine love from which I can joyfully give, receive, forgive, and continually give. Standing straight in my pain is extremely difficult, much like holding fast on the deck of a relentlessly listing ship in a rainstorm. But for me this is the way of emotional faithfulness, and I can continue living and speaking from the center, not just in easygoing times, but in the darkest nights of the soul.