Four Loves

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 in 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.

With those words, CS Lewis challenges my being.  I want to connect deeply with a woman, but I want to stay safe.  I cannot have both. 

So I am here, ready to travel outside of myself, ready to listen, ready to be vulnerable. 

In all actuality, it takes a strong man to be able to do this. God help me to be strong. 

Falling out of bed

Liam loves to sleep in a bed with somebody else.  Most of the time it is Ryan or Noah, sometimes with me.  We all enjoy the snuggles he gives, but as he grows older, I have been trying to get him to stay in his own bed.  

Tonight was no different. I put him back in his bed a few times but while I was off with laundry and a bit of reading, it was the edge of Ryan's bed that he fell asleep on. 

Until a few minutes ago. 

I don't think Liam has ever fallen out of bed before but after he didn't stop whimpering for a minute I went to him.  Scooping him from the carpeted floor I said softly, "this is why we sleep in our own beds."  Kissed and covered, and all whimpers gone, he went back to sleep quickly. 

Back to my book I couldn't escape the thought, "how many times have I fallen out of a bed I wasn't supposed to be in?"  I don't mean sleeping around type beds, Kim was my only and will be until I am married again at some point, but metaphorically speaking.  How many times have I fallen on the floor, hurting myself, because I didn't listen to the one that gave me life?

And while I answer "too many to recall" I take solace knowing that Gods affection to me is greater than I will ever understand.