Broken Love
What’s been striking me most lately in the careful art of caring for others is how broken we all are in our love. Love. Belonging. Being treasured and welcomed. We mean so well, but love so incompletely and imperfectly.
I don’t mean this to sound pessimistic and I’m sure this won’t land well. Just hear me on this: All love is broken love.
We all seem to break and get broken in our most intimate relationships. We get scared so we might accidentally and unconsciously cling too hard and suffocate the life and freedom and spontaneity of the other. Or we, in our love and subsequent fear of a painful ending choose distance and disconnect. Better to play it safe.
We don’t love all that well when we don’t live reflectively and self aware. We break and rupture the bonds of love when our unconscious living moves us toward defaults of survival and self-preservation; which in relationship can look like demanding and smothering or distancing and remaining safely aloof.
The greatest gift you can give to those you love (and yourself) is stepping onto your own healing path. A path that leaves room for discovering your limitations and sharp edges, making sense of how those developed, and then bravely making new moves that are a lot scary but incredibly rewarding. We need the mirror of compassionate guides be with us in the places we’ve been broken. A careful guide can gently point to where our hurts have us left us wounded with sharp edges that hurt others. The same guides can also direct us toward gentle ways of healing, repairing, and living more openly.
We will always love incompletely and imperfectly. In our own experiences we’ve been loved and wounded by broken love. What can be different though is learning to lean into our limitations, starting on our own path to recovery, and letting God meet us there- healing us with His most perfect love.
Dive Deeper…
Our course on attachment explores the concept of self-awareness within our relationship with ourselves and with others. Learn more about the course by clicking the button below.