I don't think
there is a person alive who has truly loved someone that hasn't wondered at
some point if it was worth the bullshit.
When we are young, we think love is about finding
the perfect fit. As the years pile up behind us, we realize love is just as
much about discovering who WE really are. It introduces us to the best parts of
ourselves and, unfortunately, to some of the worst.
Nobody walks away from falling in love without
scars.
Some people lose a spouse to death. Others
lose someone to distance, divorce, betrayal, or simply the slow drift that
happens when two people stop running in the same direction. The ending is
different, but the ache has the same rhythm. Empty chairs at the kitchen table.
Favorite songs that suddenly become difficult to hear. Driving past places that
once meant everything and now forces you to take a detour.
C.S. Lewis wrote, "To love at all is to be
vulnerable." He wasn't warning us to avoid love. He was
reminding us that the price of opening our heart is that someday it may break
and it probably will.
I have spent enough years on this
earth to know that heartbreak isn't a punishment. It is a tuition bill.
Love teaches lessons that success
never can. It teaches patience, forgiveness and humility. It teaches that
people are wonderfully imperfect, including the person staring back at you in
the bathroom mirror every morning.
Looking back, I can see mistakes that I
couldn't see while I was making them. There were moments I should have listened
instead of trying to solve the problem. Times I should have put down my pride
before it became more important than peace. Days when I assumed there would
always be another tomorrow to say what needed to be said.
That doesn't mean I regret
loving someone. Not for a single minute.
Because even though love can leave you with an empty side of the bed or
a quiet house after the kids have gone home. It also leaves you with memories
that become part of who you are. It teaches you how deeply your heart is
capable of caring. It gives you stories that still make you smile in the middle
of a melancholy day.
The
goal isn't to avoid getting hurt. The goal is to become the kind of person who
learns from the hurt without allowing it to harden your heart. Bitterness is
easy and growth is difficult. One builds walls while the other builds character.
If you have loved and lost someone,
don't waste that pain. Let it make you kinder. Let it make you more patient
with the next person who crosses your path. Let it remind you to hug your kids
a little longer, call your parents while you still can, and tell the people you
care about exactly how much they mean to you.
Love doesn't always last forever,
but the lessons often do...
… And
maybe that is one of God's quiet miracles.
He doesn't promise that every love story will have a happy
ending, but He does promise that none of the love we give away is ever truly
wasted.
It changes us, it prepares us
and it reminds us that a broken heart is still proof that, at least one time in
our lives, we had the courage to put it on the line of scrimmage.
Happy Birthday Terese, the three best
gifts we ever had come from love.
