What is forgotten is the reality of being in love. The grit of struggling through the ups and downs... and even knowing what the ups and downs are.
Fear has a strange way of convincing risks aren't risks, they are promises. There is always a fifty-fifty chance, but some times we convince ourself it isn't a possibility of failure, it is a forgone conclusion. The time comes, and all signs point toward a turn around. "Don't go this way. Stupidity lies ahead," they all seem to say. Nothing makes sense, and it doesn't look the way you pictured it, and the other person is standing somewhere ahead asking you to cross the bridge of trust. And all the while, fear has conveniently forgotten to tell you, those sings are in Spanish, someone just told you what they said, but you really don't know.
And as you give fear the control, it takes your hand and gives you a pair of glasses you begin to see the world through... and nothing, nothing is secure anymore. The object of your affection is no longer loving you, they are using you. Their promises are now just excuses. Their struggles prophecies into the future.
Then comes the moment of truth. All of the sudden you see the corner of the tableau of lies the fear has woven, and you stop dead in your tracks.
The fork in the road is clear, but the path is not. Head or heart. What will be the deciding factor? And how to satisfy both? Risk on either side, and the knowledge that it will never be perfect... anywhere... with anyone... ever.
Every bad decision mocks you from the sidelines. Two different wisdoms fight for the stage. One raging, dancing the tango with fear calls you to drop your bags and run the opposite direction. Too hard, too much, too likely to fail. After all, you, being the common denominator, in all of the mistakes till now, are making the decision. Better to use a carbon copy of what worked for someone else. At least it is someone's version of perfection. Maybe it will work for you as well. Better than failing again.
The other wisdom holds the hand of chance of a lifetime... maybe. The oxymoron of a love so deep and safe, so real and strong, so full of promise, yet so hard, so difficult, so requiring of everything you think you don't have to give... most of all trust. Faith. Hope in someone else. Someone that may not deserve your trust, faith, and hope, yet is asking it all the same. Strikingly familiar is the story of a Good Hope, that loved when it was not yet loved in return. Unmovable, this love does not allow you to manipulate it, to fit it to you, no, you have to fit yourself to it. You must mold to the shape it requires, and for once, you can't make it work. All the struggles, all the questions, all the pushes and pulls refuse to adjust its form to your liking, your comfort, your security.
So instead, you sit at the fork, the relationship requiring from you for the first time, rather than you requiring from it. A strange juncture of power sits in your lap. You can't control the outcome, but you can control whether it has a chance. The problem is, what it requires... you don't know how to give.
I Corinthians, though over quoted, makes more sense than you would like to admit. "Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves."
No promises before it of "When it is right," or "If it looks like this..." or even "If they have a good record trustworthiness..." No. Nothing like that. And I guess it makes sense, since no one will ever be loved if we only choose to love those worthy, but still, it comforts your heart none to hear these things as you stare down the fork in the road.
This is what they forget to tell you when you fall in love. One day, it gets hard. And one day, it will ask you for the one thing you don't want to give. And one day you will have to have the faith to keep going, when everything tells you to run. And no, it's not stupidity; actually that is love. That is precisely what it is. Believing the absolute best about the person you love, even when you don't.
See, the best in that person isn't determined by whether or not you believe in it. It just is. And sometimes the hardest part is trusting them when they say they love you. Trusting them that it means more than words, Hallmark cards or flowers on your birthday, but that to them, when their time comes, and they have to risk what is required of them... that they will as well.
I guess you could say that loving them is risking that they will love you back. So as you roll the dice and step out onto the path that requires of you, you stare into the heavens and ask for the heart you don't have. The heart that protects, trusts... hopes.... preserves.
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