It isn’t easy to love.

To desire it? Simple.

To find it? Not as simple, but still possible.

But to navigate it? To learn another person as you share the innermost parts of your being?

To learn about the things you didn’t know about yourself until they showed up? The good, bad and ugly?

It is not easy to love.

To try again after a shattered heart? After dashed hopes and plans that will never be? Meeting another soul, feeling your chest warm and your stomach drop as you realize, “Uh oh. Here we go again.”

Wondering if this love will go the distance. Then wondering what “the distance” is?

When do we deem love “successful”? At the altar? After kids? When one of us dies? We can dwell on that later.

I think it’s a brave thing we do — loving. Loving again. Searching for it. Yearning it. Finding it. Fighting for it.

It is a miracle, that’s what it is. To see parts of yourself, of another, and to decide, “Let’s face tomorrow together, again.”

To lose a love and to will your heart to try again. To bring a withering love back to life. To choose love when others have said let it go. To see it bloom again.

Love is in the tears. In the aging. In the laughter — oh the laughter. In the fights. In the apologies.

It’s in the snores. The awkward bathroom moments. The growing.

It is a terrifying thing and I don’t think that fear ever leaves. Because the more you know it — this love — the more you want it to stay.

The more you fear that it will leave.

But still, you continue. We continue. And I think that is a beautiful thing. A brave thing.

To love. To accept love. To grow a love.

A daily miracle you get to share with another. What a crazy, wondrous thing.

Image by Bianca Van Dijk from Pixabay