Why love hurts
Love hurts, if you didn’t know.
Let’s talk about why love hurts, because that’s going to clear up a lot of disappointment and confusion and fear.
Love that hurts is not a Hollywood kind of hurt. Not the jealous soul who travels through time or rainstorms to reach his love before she marries someone else. We commiserate with that kind of hurt; we can lean into it for 120 minutes and fall asleep afterwards. We can even experience something similar, maybe once in our lives.
But love that hurts us all is risker than that and happens more frequently.
Love hurts when you advocate for the marginalized and defend the defenseless.
Love hurts when you take time to encourage someone who doesn’t know you or won’t reciprocate.
Love hurts when you spend an afternoon counseling and friend who ignores wise advice and continues messing up his life.
Love hurts when you shelter a runaway who rejects your compassion and blames you for her problems.
Love hurts when you invest in a friendship with someone who betrays your trust.
Love hurts when you grieve someone you’ll never see again.
Love hurt when you welcome someone into your family, but they hold you at arms’ length and resent the inclusion.
Love hurts when you trust someone only to find out he’s lied to you.
Love hurts when you labor over a project or your craft, only to have your work dismissed.
Love hurts when you enter into someone else’s trauma and help them carry it, even when it reminds you of your own trauma.
Love hurts when you invest in people for the greater good, and they vilify you for your efforts.
That’s what real love does. It gives and suffers so others can have hope (even if they don’t believe hope is possible).
Love hurts because love is an investment of time, energy, passion, and faith, usually in the face of fear, it’s greatest enemy. It is the most serious kind of risk because it challenges the seemingly irrefutable truth that fear speaks–that someone is past hope, that you aren’t capable, that nothing ever turns out of you. Fear recognizes that love’s success feels dependent on another person’s perceptions and emotions. Love struggles with reality but wins when it casts out fear (see 1 John 4:18).
I believe that’s why, as we age, we shrink our social circles to a safe and manageable size. Once we’ve been hurt a few times by someone we loved and trusted, we hesitate to love wholeheartedly again. That’s why, the older that we get, the more careful (dare I say cynical, bitter, and suspicious?) we become about relationships because we understand how the world works.–how people work. We know too well what can happen if we trust too much or love too much or give too much. My heart might just get run over.
The important question is: How can you love without hurting? By now, you must realize that walling yourself off for emotional protection just walls you off from love and joy. Instead of protecting yourself from hurt, you hurt yourself. So not loving is not a good option.
To avoid getting hurt, we can remain friends with people they’ve known forever and don’t like very much. We might even date or marry the wrong person because it’s a manageable option. We might stay in a church and criticize it rather than invest in it. We might remain in a job we hate because we have a sense of control there. Avoiding hurt can make us do foolish things.
Here’s the problem. You can’t. You can’t love others without being hurt. Even Jesus couldn’t avoid being hurt by his loved ones. I suspect he mitigated the pain by keeing his focus on the whole picture and the innate potential in every person who hurt him.
Here’s the deal: the hurt you’re willing to carry for others reveals the depth to which you love them. Celebrate that. It means you’re fully alive and that you are investing in the people around you. Events may create disappointments, but they don’t really hurt you. Hurt is always attached to people who need to be loved, who somewhere along the way doubted that they were loved. Until you came along.
Don’t stop loving people, even the risky ones. Don’t shut off the unfailing gentleness and willingness to see the best in others and respond to the needs because they need to be met–not because the person deserves your help (see 1 Cor. 13:4-8).
Insulating your life is just not worth the loneliness. Believe me, I’ve tried. Love is always worth the risk. Embrace the people around you, especially the needy ones. Perhaps you’re in their lives because they need you. Yes, do the boundaries thing (that’s another topic). But love others because when it’s your turn, someone will be there for you.
Actually, Someone has always been there for you.
“I give you a new command. Love one another. You must love one another, just as I have loved you. If you love one another, everyone will know you are my disciples.” (John 13:34-35)
