Choose Love

Each week I send an email to all of my student employees. It's a way to stay connected and bring a little bit of the personal into our professional day. 

This week I want to share the message with you, too. 

Buckle up, guys, it’s kind of a long one. It’s also maybe the most important weekly email I’ve ever sent, so pay attention!

Way back, a lifetime or more ago, I was a licensed foster parent. Before any of my kids were born, I fostered other people’s kids for short periods of a few weeks or a few months.

As you might imagine this came with plenty of precious and humbling experiences. It also came with some hard stuff and heartbreak. The deepest heartbreak came from those times when it seemed that I would get to become a permanent mom to the child I’d loved so deeply, only to find out that instead of adoption I had to hand the child over to someone else.

Even nearly twenty years afterward it is still hard to remember and talk about those experiences. The hand-off for one baby, 22-month old baby K, happened in the Salt Lake City airport. The agency workers had to pry him out of my arms while I cried too hard to speak. 3-year old Z was passed over in an agency parking lot. He must have realized what was happening because as he was carried away he was fighting to climb out of the social worker’s arms and come back to me, screaming for Mommy at the top of his lungs.

It was brutal.

After each disappointment I would think that I couldn’t possibly put myself through that again; the hurt was too terrible, the emotional pain was too great, and the risk was too high. And each time God would remind me that love is never wasted, and that He would help me bear my part of the emotional cost so that I could focus on helping His littlest ones who carried far more pain and hurt than anyone should have to bear, especially at such tender ages.

In that difficult crucible I learned that I was strong enough to choose love, over and over again. Even when I knew the risk for hurt was high, I knew that I would choose love over fear.

Fast forward to now, when as you know—because I overshare in these weekly emails—I began dating again a few months ago. It’s been every bit as weird and hilarious and exciting and awkward and fun as I expected. It also comes with a special brand of emotional risk, as most of you know, because you are either right in the thick of dating alongside me or only moved out of it recently.

Last week a relationship that I liked came to an end. It wasn’t my choice (doh!) and the abrupt ending made me realize that I was more emotionally invested than I’d thought. It hurt.  

It was so tempting, in the days after, to retreat back and take a pass on this whole dating thing. It was also tempting to hold back and not allow myself to become invested in other potential relationships, to play it safe, even though I know that genuine connection can’t happen without real investment.

Fortunately God reminded me that I already made this decision years ago.

I choose love.

Even knowing the risks and the sometimes inevitable pain, in spite of fears—many of which are quite valid—I still choose love.

This isn’t just because I’m hoping that at some point it pays off and there are rewards to equal the pain. None of us have any guarantees that our investment of time, energy, and love will pay off the way we want, whether it’s romantic love or otherwise. Just like with my little fostered babies, I choose love because they deserve it. They are worth my love, my risk, my hurt.

The alternative to choosing love is to close yourself off emotionally and stunt your own growth. It offers an illusion of safety, but you miss out on so much. I choose love because I deserve it. I deserve the stretching and growing and joy that comes when you go all in. I am worth the love, risk, and hurt of giving 100%.

Nearly all of you are probably in situations right now where you can choose fear or you can choose love. Sometimes this will be about romantic relationships but more often it will be about an annoying coworker or difficult roommate, a troubled sibling or needy friend. Choosing love doesn’t mean subsuming yourself to please others. Love isn’t codependency, and sometimes real love means honoring healthy boundaries and loving yourself enough to enforce them. Figuring out the line between healthy self-sacrificial love and unhealthy enmeshment may take years. Be brave enough to do it.

At the end of the day love is a tremendous act of courage and the most worthwhile thing you can do with your life.

I hope that when you have the choice you will always choose love. It’s the only way to live.

PS—I have a date tomorrow with someone new J. Don’t let fear win!