There is no safe investment.
To love at all is to be vulnerable.
Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.
So says Jack, my friend and pedagogue, in his The Four Loves. And I find this to be true. You may have read one of my previous posts sharing part of my story about finding God and what it means to let Him love me. It is one thing to be vulnerable before the Almighty God, who will never leave or forsake, but another thing altogether to be vulnerable before another fallible, faulty, and self-serving human being.
Marriage is risky.
I am a messy person. Not externally - like in our home, leaving clothes everywhere, dishes undone, the bathroom mirror ajar - that's his specialty. Inwardly, privately, though, I am a mess. There are unresolved issues that I like to keep to myself. Marriage doesn't really allow that. Not really. All I am is his - including my mess. And vice versa.
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Vulnerable can mean "to be open to attack." Completely exposed. Messes bared. Wholly at the mercy of someone else. What a risk.
What a risk to place yourself in dependence of another, to willingly subject yourself to someone who is not you. Who does not think as you do. Who has not experienced what you have, and may not understand that.
What a risk to invest your energy, will and emotion, and your very life to a person who will break your heart without trying or thinking.
What a risk to know that you are in that same position to him, in a position to so easily break his heart, though he may not ponder the situation as analytically as you do.
Let me finish the paragraph I started at the top:
There is no safe investment.
To love at all is to be vulnerable.
Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly 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.
You see? The opposite of vulnerability is impenetrability. Refusing to be vulnerable is refusing to be understood. You are completely inaccessible. The fear of being vulnerable is similar to the fear of being unloved, but at the expense of being known. If you are unknown by the one that you love (or fear to love), there is no hope for love in the relationship at all. And this shortcoming is magnified in marriage.
Marriage is a religion. It is a devotion founded on faith and trust and love, but based upon the love of Christ for each individual rather than the individual's ability to love on his or her own. Perhaps, then, it is a parable for religion. It is not safe; it is profoundly risky. And that's love. That's life.
