“What is grief if not love persevering?” – WandaVision
Love. It feels like the most empowering strength, but also the most debilitating weakness. There is a shadow side to love which is the grief that comes from the lack of a recipient. This grief stems from the consuming need to hold onto to the hope of this love being fully realized and accepted.
Love is not static. As relationships shift and morph, love tries to adapt, but it often is left in excess as the relationship does not demand the amount of love that is felt. Hence, grief is needed to process this love that is outside the bounds of the evolved relationship. Whether the boundaries are created by time, distance, circumstance, or even death, love must be honored and the object of its affection grieved as it can no longer receive that affection.
Love is sacrificial and selfless. It is never meant to be held onto, but it exists to be given away. It might even need to be redirected if the recipient is not willing to receive it. How easy it is to hold onto it and give it away fictionally. As relationships change, I hold onto love and give it away in my mind, knowing that the object cannot or will not receive it in reality. This only delays the inevitable. Grief must come when unattached love is addressed. Love must be felt and surrendered, grieving the loss of the full expression and fulfillment of that love.
Denying love does not eliminate its existence. I must lean into feeling the love I do not desire and value the season in which that love was meaningful to me. I must honor the relationship that love was attached to in that specific season of my life. I have permission to feel the persevering effects of love in order to grieve its unattachment and bury it for future redemption.
Love is only fully experienced when it is rooted in the proper source – the Creator of all love and the embodiment of it. The shadow of grief is never present in this love because the relationship is eternally steady. The expectation one can have when in the presence of this Love is mercy.
Identify. Feel. Release. Heal. Redeem.
“…keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.” Jude 21
My Mind Vortex 