Let's Make a Deal

Mrs. Bradley and her two sons

I visited with my dear neighbors yesterday.  Lamar lost his mother unexpectedly two weeks ago.  She was 81 and had a wonderful life, yet it still happened too soon.  We are never really ready to lose someone that we love.  I listened to Lamar talk about his mother.  She was an amazing woman who raised two remarkable men on her own.  As he stood there with pride and tears in his eyes, I was reminded of a comment C.S. Lewis made following the death of his wife, Joy. “The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.”

If you want to watch a true love story, watch the movie Shadowlands.  It tells the story of Lewis' marriage to Joy Gresham.  It started out as a platonic relationship, but over time the relationship developed into a deep, committed love. The movie portrayed Lewis as guarding his heart ever so closely because he did not want to experience the pain one day that love can bring.   However, there was no barrier strong enough to protect his heart from the love that he was to experience with her.  Honestly, who would want to border up their heart in such a manner?  Lewis obviously realized this when he said, “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.”

Lamar and his beautiful mother.

I have thought about this statement a lot.  When we love someone, there is a chance that we will end up with a broken heart. Hopefully, we will all find a love that is true, perfect and complete.  But, even then, are we protected from pain?  No.  Death will come one day to us all.  And like Lewis and my friend Lamar, we may one day have to stand by the casket and say goodbye to that someone whom we loved ever so dearly.

If we don't open our hearts to love others, we will not be hurt.  No one would argue with that.  But is sacrificing the happiness that loving others can bring worth the emptiness of an unbreakable, impenetrable and irredeemable heart?  I don't believe that it is, not for one minute.

I have a whole lot of love in my heart.  I plan to pour it out on others.  I will love my family and my friends deeply. One day I will lose some of them. And one day I will leave some of them when I leave this earth.  That will hurt.  I also hope one day to take the chance of pouring out the love in my heart to another man who will be my partner and soul mate.  Will I get hurt along the way?  Possibly.  But the alternative is locking my heart away in that casket to watch it shrivel up to nothing.  That is not the life for me.

So here is the deal, my friends.  We can love deeply and experience all the happiness that comes along with it.  One day that love may bring us pain when we experience loss.  That is just the way that it works.  In spite of that, it's a deal I am willing to take.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3
If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.