It’s both terrifying and therapeutic to process the journey of a broken heart on a blog, even if the audience is extremely minimal. However, it’s worth the risk because I know I am not the first or the last to be on this journey, and my words might just be the bonding moment needed for someone to continue their journey with the knowledge that they are not alone in their feelings. At the very least, it helps me exit my mind vortex, penning words that would otherwise be spiraling and creating havoc in my head.
Love is risky. It requires decisions to be made that are often akin to a leap of faith. Love is vulnerable and messy and complicated. In my experience, it’s been a constant war between the heart and head. We are inundated with media that displays love as a feeling that moves you to take any sort of risk, especially if it means keeping that love in your life. In my recent experience, that was not the case. It’s caused me to wrestle – was my love not worth fighting for? Was it not worth any sacrifice to hold onto it? Or the most painful question – was I not worth the risk to do whatever it took to keep loving me and keep my love in your life? I cannot even begin to express how much I wish he would have taken the leap of faith and made the move. It’s the pain of constantly living in the “what if” while trying to silence the never-ending scenarios knowing that living in the imaginary future does nothing for the present. I wish he thought I was worth the risk. I wish our love was so valuable to him that he would do anything to preserve it. I wish he looked at me and thought I was a reward worth any risk he could ever take.
Because that is what I see when I look at him. It’s the reason there was even a risky option given to him as a second chance. One that I had hoped his love would compel him to take. I know he looked at the option as a risk only for him, but I wish he could see the huge risk I was taking as well. It was a risk of trust. A risk of baring my heart and asking if he was willing to fight for it. And for the second time, it was rejected as not a viable option.
Most people would tell me I should be thankful that his level of commitment or lack thereof was revealed at the very beginning before it would become even more painful as time goes on. I wish I could convince my heart to feel this gratitude as I keep walking to my window, convinced his heart has changed and his appearance will communicate his belief that I am worth the risk. I know this hope sounds pathetic, and trust me, it feels just as pathetic.
So, I do the only thing I know how to do in this very confusing, complicated, and cloudy season of suffering. I turn to the One who I know has not only declared I am worth the risk but has demonstrated it in the most profound display of love ever shown to humankind. I look to Jesus and the cross for the proof that I am worth the risk. It reminds me that my love is worth the risk. It reminds me that true, pure love always compels us to sacrifice. It reminds me that the reward of a relationship with me was worth the immense risk of suffering and death. Wow. Now, that’s a love worth fighting for.
Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us...But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. – Romans 5:3-5, 8
My Mind Vortex 