Love = Vulnerability

Love plays a major role in The Calling of Ella McFarland, set for release on December 1.

Shortly before I turned 9, I learned that vulnerability tags alongside love.

Our family of 5 was preparing to pile into the car for a Saturday evening at the drive-in. As I skipped across the family room, I wondered where Daddy was.

Peeking out the kitchen window, I saw Prince, our Collie, barking and running toward the road. As a pickup truck slowed, Prince snapped at the tires. With a simple turn of a steering wheel, the truck caught my Prince and pulled him under.

My heart broke at the sight of gentle Prince floundering beneath that truck. And lying there in the drive, his bark silenced, the breeze ruffling his coat. 

Daddy moved Prince out of sight, thinking to shield me. He never knew I witnessed out the window every agonizing second.

If I were to relive those days, knowing what I know now, would I choose to love Prince still? Or would the memory of his violent death, bound up with heartache, harden me to such a love?

I don’t know.

Unlike me, God knew in the beginning what it would cost Him when He chose to love humankind by giving us free will: His Son’s agony on the cross.

He did it anyway.

Perhaps the closest we come to God is when we choose to love. In doing so, we experience the One Who Is Love and become vulnerable to rejection and loss. Like Him.

God, help us to love anyway.

To love at all is to be vulnerable.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves