Saturday, December 21, 2013

Brave Love

I knew when I decided to love you

fully, with all of my cells

that I was risking everything.

I knew you were human

and that you might die

younger than either of us wanted.

Despite this,

I still chose to love all of you

with all of me.

Because you deserved that

and because I did too.

And though you did die -

younger than either of us wanted -

to stand in the pain of your death

and continue to love you fully,

fiercely,

with unwavering dedication,

has transformed me.

For I know now,

that to have given every breath of myself

to love the all of you

is the most beautifully brave thing

I have ever done in my lifetime.

It is the single greatest achievement

of my life.

I have learned

that this is what true love is -

to choose the possibility of pain

for the privilege to be love.

It is to risk everything

- everything -

inside ourselves.

It is to meet our greatest fears

and decide that it's still worth it,

so that we may come to realize

that we are capable of giving

the kind of love

that changes lives

and moves mountains.

In this way,

true, deep, complete love is not easy.

It is simple, but not an easy choice.

Which is why

whenever I see such love in the world

It leaves me in awe.

Never a more beautiful thing

have I seen

than the immense bravery

of any single human being

that chooses to LOVE.


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5 comments:

  1. So beautiful, so true and so painful.

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  2. So beautifully written. So true for me, too. Now, after grief has transformed into gratitude, I wonder if I have it in me to love this way again.

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    1. Thank you for reading. Thats a really good point, and something I sure wonder about too down the road. I think we all have the capacity to love deeply after great loss, when the right person comes along that we feel is worth giving it to. At least that is what I like to believe.

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  3. This is a beautiful expression of love and the vulnerability one feels when you commit to another person. I find myself in just such a situation now. After 8 years of loss, saying I was open to the possibility of love again, but thinking/knowing it was not going to happen... I have met the right person... and discovered I can love and be loved again! I truly believe that after experiencing love and living through the death of your beloved, it equips you in some strange way to love even deeper. Create the possibility for being open to a loving relationship! you can always work out the details later.

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