I was thirteen years old when my heart was broken for the first time.  My best friend, Beth, wrote this poem in a note she intricately folded up like a small football and launched at me during study hall.

“It’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.”

My thirteen year old brain…thought no way.  That’s total crap!  This hurts so bad I prefer to have never loved.  And thus it began.

Maybe, it was the repeated heartache that lead me to the place I revisited for years.   Let my heart open up, endure pain and close it up tight.   Each time, vowing to myself that I would never do that again.  The painful vows we make as children are foundational and lasting.

It was just easier, safer to stay out in the margins of relationships where no one could hurt me.

Over and over again, suffering and pain reinforced the idea that people will hurt me and love…well, love is just not something I want to do.  People hurt one another even when they don’t mean to.  So I built walls…impregnable fortresses.

But how does one live this life without love and real, authentic, meaningful relationships?

Over a year ago, I had decided I wanted to write to leave something of a legacy for my daughters.  On a whim went to a “writers workshop” in Chicago.  I will never forget entering a conference room with twenty something writers gathered around the table, all of them with Apple Laptops and blogs.  I enter forty something and carrying my work assigned Dell.   Talk about intimidating.

At the end of the day, the moderator gave me two instructions.  First, you must call yourself a writer and secondly, you need writing friends.

Ugh, writing friends?  I don’t have writing friends or even know people who write.  To me that sounded painful and impossible.  I live in Indiana. I am a corporate banker.  Do people even write in Indiana?  Seriously…this is what I think.

Of course people write in Indiana.  I find my way to a Faith writing class where I meet the most incredible group of “writing” people.  God has given me writing friends!  Each person totally unique to our group.   We were like a puzzle that just fit, but one emerged as our leader.  Larry.

Have you ever met someone you just felt soft when you are next to…safe?  I always felt this way around my Grandpa and since he’s been gone, I so miss that free and protected feeling.  Larry isn’t old enough to be my grandpa but he’s so real, tender, careful and purposeful with his words.

I remember the first time he read out loud something he wrote.  It was poetic but powerful.  Tender but strong.  I think, how did he DO that?

For the first few weeks, I copied him.  I poured over my writing and I tried to do what he did.  His detailed descriptions and poetic prose.  It was great practice for me to help find my writing voice.

I began to send Larry my work and he would push me, challenge me to go deeper until I found that honest, authentic place I was looking for.   And as I read out loud, Larry would listen intently and smile like a proud Papa.

Each week he would declare, “I think this is your best piece yet!”  My heart would truly sing and swell with pride.  Everyone needs a Larry to spur them on. 

Larry isn’t hard to love. In fact, I think he loved me first.  He was safe and he made it easy to love him.

But what about people who are hard to love?  The people who when we love them, we might suffer for it?  Family that disappoint us, friends that walk away, spouses that leave or parents that don’t show up.

Sometimes , God gives us people who are hard to love.  In seasons of my life, I have been hard to love and people have chosen to love me anyway.

God chooses to love me anyway, when I am unlovable, when I break HIS heart.  I don’t need to look much farther than the Cross to know just how much He loves me.  Jesus suffered and died for me….and I think how much more is HIS suffering than mine?   He never leaves me and He never walks away.  

So, it is better to have loved….

I think God lavishes us with people to love and people who love us….just so we get to experience first hand how much HE loves us.  Suffering and all.   We get to feel just how much He was willing to give up for love.

What I am willing to give up for love?  My pride, my fear of being hurt, my security?

I read a blog this week from Rick Warren, and his words penetrated deep into my heart.  “Tomorrow is not promised.”   I was reminded that we must love well today.  Love from the center of who I am….taking the risk and expecting nothing in return.

Two weeks ago, Larry shared that he and wife are returning home to Oregon.   I am so happy for him and his family and this gift to return home.  But I am sad too.

Sad because I have grown to love this sweet writer, encourager, friend of mine.

At first, it was easy for me to lock away these feelings in a little box and pretend it doesn’t hurt.  It is so easy to revert to “Business Kristen” instead of feeling the hurt I feel, the loss I feel.   A loss I would like to not feel.

But without the loss, would we know how deeply we have the ability to love?   Living my life and not loving deeply, with my whole heart, I have missed out.   Missed out on the love God wants us to have and share with one another.

1 Corinthians 14:1 says, Let love be your highest goal.

I now accept loving hurts and I cannot stop that.  People will hurt us, but we choose to love anyway.   Because loving others the way Jesus loves us is all about HIM and not about us.

And I remember the Cross.