On Love and Brokenness

On Love and Brokenness

Thoughts by Ryan Billington

February, 2010

What is it—miracle or devil—that causes us to believe in love?  What is it—miracle or devil—that begs inside of us to believe in hope?  What is it—miracle or devil—that compels us to believe that good wins out?

For though love is true, we know it is not life that loves.  Nature is chance, and life begets neither compassion nor pardon for the living.  And we love not life, for we see the tragedy and injustice that life brings both to the good and the wicked, that time and chance really do happen to us all.  No, it is not life we love, but the people that life brings our way.  And because of these two undeniable truths that live etched in our veins, there lives—in our hearts—another.  This third truth we live, breathe, see, and feel, yet it struggles to find expression.  Often the greatest truths are those beyond the description of mere letters.  Truths of light.  Truths of black.  And this third truth is an enigma wreathed in both—light shadowed by darkness.  The best bound to the broken.

Love is not happiness.  Love does not win.  The way of love is better, it’s path fuller.  But the choice to love is a choice to be broken.

Deep inside the inner soul of humanity lives a knowing, a feeling that something about the human condition is broken.  Tragic.  Melancholic.  The human story is the search—giving, receiving, experiencing—love.  And love… love is a journey—a journey that contains the best, the fullness, the essence of life itself.  Yet it is a path that whispers of an ache.

For though love is the most powerful of forces, love is a gift.  A choice risked to be given, a risk chosen to be received.  And some of those dearest to us will not take it.

True life is inseparable from love, for by choosing one, we find it requires the other.  The brokenness of life, the broken quality that yields the tragic nature of the human existence is simply this—if we love, we will be broken.  And from this knowledge comes one of the most beautiful decisions any could make:  to love despite the risk, despite the coming heart break.  There is beauty in such a decision… beauty in such pain…

The beauty of love is shown in suffering.