Love is Change

I sat beneath a tree in the dark and the rain. Tears streaked my face but I could not tell them from the pouring rain. I felt as though I would break; as though my heart had been torn from my chest and lay bleeding and bruised upon the ground. I ached and each breath felt as though it tore through me. I had run here. Out the door into the night. Thunder and lightening dancing through the sky and the wind raging and ripping around me, crying out in anguish and rage.

Why do we feel things so strongly? Most especially those things which hurt us? I had not seen this coming. I was raised sheltered and secure in the love of my home and family. My life had not been difficult. I knew the love of my parents and my brother and sister. Sure, we fought. What family doesn't? But there was never anything that happened that caused us to doubt each other and never any harm done to the degree that it could not be forgiven. But this? This was betrayal, it was agony, and doubt, and questioning what I had done wrong, how this had happened.

I was a child, and my father had left me. One day he was there and all was well. The next? He was gone. He had packed his bags, taken his car, and driven away to another province to live with a woman. No warnings or explanations. Just gone.

Through the eyes of a child, love is simple. We love wholeheartedly. Never doubting that we are loved in return. Seeking the approval of our parents and loved ones and relishing it when it was given. Nothing ever seemed too great of a hurdle to overcome, nothing could not be forgiven. Yet, suddenly, it shatters and rends us to our core. For some, the instances when our understanding of love and it's boundaries changes, it is caused by what may seem a great or small thing, depending upon who views it. For myself, as a seven year old girl, my father's abandonment broke me; and what I knew as love. Those closest to us are the ones who wield the greatest power to cause us pain. Love is risk, it is pain, it is growth, it is forgiveness, it is compromise, but in the eyes of a child and the mind of a child, the day that love shatters is the day that the world will never be the same.

Now, as a grown woman with a family of my own I can see other perspectives. I can understand, to some degree, why my father chose to leave. I bear the scars and the pain of that betrayal still. It has shaped my relationships, sometimes making them more difficult to endure and struggle through. With children of my own, I know I am incapable of leaving them for my own choices. I love them with all I am. I will change for them, I will struggle through my issues, I will cry tears of pain when my own scars cause me to fail them, but despite this.... in my love for them I will raise them up, praise them when they do well, strengthen them when they fall, hold them when they cry, laugh with them, assure them, teach them the beauty that is to be found in the relationships we build and bear. Love is not a static thing, it is not selfish, it teaches us to bend rather than break (although sometimes it feels as if we do break, only to realize we're stronger when we come out the other end). Ever heard the expression "Love is Pain?" Well, I am of the opinion that love.... is change.