The truth about love is that it isn’t always easy. There isn’t a way to put our hearts back in the tube. Once they are out there, they seem so vulnerable. You can’t keep it in a shell. You can’t protect it always because you wont get to enjoy what love is, what love has for you, what love gives to you. But it is scary. Once you see that your heart can be broken over the littlest things, you want to put it back in the box. Keep it safe. Guard the goal. Run. Hide.

As you retreat into the deep woods of your solo mind, you can see the bright sunshine and grassy rolling hills turn to a dark, damp, foggy forest around you. This is your safe place, where your heart can’t be found. You find your patch in the middle of the fog, where the sunshines on the individual that you are and love, there is your small house and your tiny garden. There aren’t maps to this place, because it is just for you. You can stay hear and be relatively independently happy. You love yourself. Isn’t that enough? Or you can venture through the fog, slowly finding a path to the vast pastures of shared love. This is a big place, a beautiful place, but it isn’t your place. The only way to live here is to give your love and, in turn, some of yourself to others.

When you feel the urge to retreat, there is another option. Forgive. Love anyway. Love even if it means you lose.

Love comes in lots of forms. We can love as friends, as parents, children, siblings. We can love as a partner and we can love romantically. All love is a risk, some more so than others. But in the end if we don’t spend most of our time loving, we are missing out.

Jesus calls us to love one another, first and foremost. Because love is the motivator for doing what is right. And in the end it leads to the things that make us feel the best. We are more kind, considerate, open, honest, trusting, and trustworthy when we make an investment with the heart. We are accepting, caring, and forgiving when we see all people as an opportunity to show love and to receive love. We bring peace as we see past our own barriers and try to understand others. We don’t always agree, we don’t always like what is happening, but we know we can love someone even when they aren’t perfect…and sometimes even when they are far from perfect.

The lessons in love are never ending as we experience different things. Love means winning, but it also means losing. Sometimes losing more than you thought you had to lose. And that is when the forest seems nice. Sometimes you are lost in the forest and not even in your own place of sunshine. In this fog there is still love. The love of Our Father is always with us. It is what keeps us from deciding the journey to the sun is not worth the hassle. It is what drives us to continue to want to be loved and to show love. It is what nags us to not forget there is sunshine.

Being lost in the fog can seem overwhelming and being hidden in the isolation of self love can be unbearably lonely. But when you make your way to the edge of the forest, you see those who have been waiting for you. The people who are loving you, have loved you, and want to love you. Maybe, just maybe, you are reminded that love is an open door, not a scary cliff.