Love: A Risk

There's a picture frame on my dryer.  It was taken before I moved to Senegal: me on the couch with three little ones who called me Auntie, all of us big smiles for the camera.  I'd been part of their lives since the beginning and loved them and their parents fiercely.

They were at the airport with the rest of the family to see me off to Senegal.  I remember waving and waving, blowing kisses and going a few feet further, then waving again until I couldn't see them anymore.

After I left, things started to change.  Choices led to more choices and eventually their family was heading down a very different life path.

When I came back two years later, they weren't at the airport to welcome me back.

When I moved here, they cut off contact entirely.

Love carries the inherent possibility of pain - of loss, of goodbye, of betrayal.

Sometimes I shake my head when I think of the many hours they spent around our kitchen table - the warmth, the laughter, the inside jokes, the shared convictions.  They had been so deeply a part of our family.  It makes the betrayal sting that much more.

But love is worth the risk.

And love hopes.

Hopes - in spite of what they believe right now, in spite of what they may tell the kids, in spite of what they are surrounded with - for the truth to break through.  What seems impossible to me is not too hard for God, the One of relentless grace and love.

I look at the picture and wish there was a happy ending.  Right now there isn't - and there may never be.

Still, I can choose love.