Is It Worth It?

Oh, third semester of training, how well I remember you.  How well I remember the weight of goodbyes and the dreadful amount of tears shed.

I'd never before had so many goodbyes at once.  Or such hard ones.

My class was small so we'd gotten to know each pretty well over that year and a half, and after graduation, we were literally going all over the world: Indonesia, the US, Papua New Guinea, Colombia, Romania...

It seemed like my heart was getting pulled into pieces, and it was dreadful.

I've thought a million times since then, For someone who hates goodbyes so much, I sure picked an unfortunate life path.

People come into (and out of) my life with a no-longer-surprising frequency.  And every time I have a choice.

C.S. Lewis said: "To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even 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 it that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  To love is to be vulnerable."

It's true.  So. true.  Experience has thoroughly convinced me of that.

When I moved here, I'd start getting to know a student, and inevitably the question would come up, "What semester are you in?"  Something in me always sighed if they answered, "A senior."  If I get close to this person, I'm just going to have to goodbye in a couple months, I'd think.  And the closer I am, the harder the goodbye will be...

And there's that choice.

God doesn't want my heart to look like the dead, airless, impenetrable one that Lewis described.  He calls us to love.  To reach out.  To invest in each other.

Gulp.

I ask myself...Is it worth it?  Is it worth the possibility of pain, or betrayal, or goodbye?  Do I really want that?

On the one hand, no.  I don't.  But, as Lewis points out, I can't enjoy any of the blessings of friendships if I lock myself up in a coffin.

Love is a risk.  Sometimes we'll get hurt.  Sometimes we'll have to say teary goodbyes with no promise of a quick reunion.  Sometimes our hearts may even break.

All that's true, but I don't want it to make me a cynic.  I don't want to withdraw from people in an attempt at self-protection.

God is challenging me to choose to love.  He doesn't promise that it'll always be easy, but He calls us to it - and it will be so worth it.

It is so worth it.