Being Vulnerable

To love at all is to be vulnerable.

Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.

If you want to make sure of keeping it intact,

you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.

Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries;

avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.

But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change.

It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

 

 

I believe in loving fully, laughing loudly, and feeling deeply. It has not always been wise or safe or sensible to be this person who has the freedom to love so very richly. I used to live a life where colors were muted, sound was discordant, meals were bland, and relationships were provisional.

But time and therapy have made me a fully-loving person! Time and good therapy have allowed this person inside of me to self-actualize.

What about my children and their self-actualizing? What about Elizabeth who wants to be a super star on the stage, a film actor, Broadway, and an author? What about the strong desire for love in her life; that urge that is bound to bring her heartbreak as well as bringing her true love one day? What of that dream of living in London with her best friends and making amazing, unique, and vital lives for themselves? What about those parts of her that fear and fret and that make it difficult to become all that she dreams of?

And John has told me that he wants to "make a difference in the world one person at a time." And I think he will...

Tonight my daughter wrote music and lyrics for a new song...and the song truly blew me away. The lyrics contained heart ache and pain, struggles with me, longing for love, desires for maturity and for wings, confusion about the future, and, finally, hope. It truly brought tears to my eyes, with all of that vulnerability and beauty and hopefulness...

Elizabeth has been thinking about her future a great deal lately. While sitting with her pen and paper, guitar, or computer, she will look up at me and say What will I do with my life?, thereby letting me in on where here thoughts are roaming. And I must answer I don't know. But the questions are there. The future is becoming real to her. Her heart is speaking...  And, in her quiet way, she is singing with confidence...

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