Love is a strange and very varied emotion. There are many kinds of love: romantic love, family love, friendship love and charitable love. There are more categories, but these seem to cover most of the type of love we experience. The greatest love of all that we should most strive to feel is charitable love, or ‘agape’.
One of the main problems I am striving to overcome in my life is the desire to be reclusive. I enjoy being on my own and find being around people very difficult. I am an introvert, I’m quiet, I can’t bear constant chatter and find socialising very difficult. I have lost so many friends over time because I fear keeping in touch – it is an expression of friendship and affection that I find so hard. I cringe and feel overwhelmed when I have to make contact, but it does always feel good when I make the effort.
Although God is always understanding, I do realise that he expects me to keep trying no matter what. He wants me to constantly overcome this feeling that I would rather be alone and make the effort to connect. I don’t think that at this stage of my life I am going to change but what I do know is that I need to struggle on and put myself in situations that I dislike intensely. This is the kind of love that I must practice whatever the cost.
I read something really interesting by C S Lewis that puts my struggle into perspective:
There is no safe investment. 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. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
We all need to love and practise love: it isn’t easy and we put ourselves at risk all of the time, but to love is to be alive and God will accompany us on this journey. We were made for love.
God bless you and help you when you struggle to connect to others,
Widows Mote 