Love is terrifying, risky business. But oh so worth it.
The more I love Angel, the more I learn that love is anything but “safe.”
There are days when I’d rather hide and play “safe.” When I’d rather mask my emotions and be the dishonest version people expect—the one that doesn’t rock the boat. But that is not true love.
Today, I’m deconstructing and reconstructing love with 4 points:
Love Is Not Safe
Love is For Grown Folk
Faith Without Love is Nothing
God’s Love Helps Us Love
Love Is Not Safe
I felt so seen by this illustration by Sienna, aka somewhere_in_june on Instagram.
In C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Mr. Beaver is describing the lion, Aslan:
"Aslan is a lion - the Lion, the great Lion,” Mr. Beaver says.
"Ooh," said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."
"That you will, dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver, "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than I am, or else just silly."
"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."
C.S. Lewis created Aslan as a symbolic figure embodying God’s divine nature in the fictional world of Narnia.
God is good, but He is not “safe.” Love is good, but it is not safe.
A relationship with God and those we love requires faith, not pure safety.
Love is For Grown Folk
When I hear people talk about love, it’s a thing of magical whimsy reserved for the young. For lover girls and lover boys. I’ll always be a lover girl at heart who found her lover boy. But love doesn’t get enough credit.
Love expands us beyond ourselves. Love pushes us outside of ourselves, and that is why love makes us better. Love calls us higher. Love is for mature, grown folk.
That’s what I am learning with Angel.
We talk a big talk about faith.
When I hear people talk about faith, it’s this larger-than-life concept for warriors and spiritual giants. It’s reserved for grown folk. Men and women.
What if we have it flipped?
One of my spiritual gifts is faith, rooted in my childlike imagination. Faith sees the vision God gives us in our hearts. It sees with our eyes closed and hopes with childlike expectancy, beyond all common sense.
What is faith without love?
The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:2, “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” Nothing.
Faith Without Love is Nothing
I have partnered with God with faith that has moved mountains in so many areas of my life. The Holy Spirit has convicted me lately that I could use more maturity when it comes to my capacity to love. I have faith to envision the life I want to live, but do I have to love to die to myself to live that life?
Faith without love is nothing.
God’s Love Helps Us Love
As I fell in love with Angel’s gilded soul, he held a mirror to my own. I realized quickly that our love would mirror God’s love—good, not safe.
In my last post, I opened with these vulnerable words in my psalm “Faithful Enough To Love,”
I am fearful. My compulsion for "safety" Has extinguished The fire of my honesty. I am fearful. My addiction to avoiding heartbreak Has gatekept my heart from honest love.
I’ve outgrown this compulsion, this addiction. How? With God’s love.
1 John 4:18 says, “Perfect love casts out all fear.”
There are still days when I’m afraid to be my authentic self. But now, I am honest about it—with friends, family, coworkers, everybody.
My reunion with God, Love Personified (1 John 4:8), taught me to be honest and to stop extinguishing the fire of my honesty and end my addiction to avoiding perceived heartbreak. My heart will be broken and rebuilt into something new. Something better. Love expands us beyond ourselves.
I am learning the importance of being “Faithful Enough To Love.” Read the full psalm here.
To love well is a thing of utmost maturity. It involves resilience, patience, and endurance. Learning these virtues consists of the road less traveled, the hard road, not the safe road.
1 Corinthians 13:7 says, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Love is not for the faint of heart.
Love is a mature act of faith that has ignited a holy reunion of my broken heart. Love is sitting right next to me as I make sense of the broken pieces. Love is healing my deconstruction and reconstruction process in the form of community.
That is one of the many reasons why I love you, Angel. You love like God loves.
Thank you for giving me faith to love again.
—
Photographer website: Michael Esho.
Photographer Instagram: happilyeveresho.
Whew, this was so impactful and timely!