Opening up to Love

I have been pretty badly heart-broken.

I can ignore it.  I can trivialize it.  I can even forget it for a while.

But I still have a broken heart.

A heart that doesn’t trust love.  Or people who say they love.  A heart that doesn’t believe in kindness, honesty, selflessness, comfort, or healing.

But today I was waiting around in the classroom and picked up a book called “Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul”.  Not a book I would typically read because I don’t go for those kinds of sappy, amateur stories and I am a decade removed from teenage.  But I had time to kill and it was lying on a table needing to be re-shelved so in between the table and shelf I flipped it open.  And read a single story.  A story of a girl and her grandmother.  A story of feeling alone, isolated, and full of loss.  The girl tells her classmates about her grandmother and also about her death.  And after telling herself it was foolish to open her heart and be honest, she receives anonymous support.  A gift of lilacs like the ones she saw with her grandmother and words of encouragement.

And I am encouraged too.  People do sometimes care.  We can be rewarded with love when we open up our hearts to others.  And we do have to open up ourselves and be honest – to not be alone and miserable.

Of course, we all want to be loved.