Loving Well is Going to Hurt
Loving Well is Going to Hurt
by Sara Kernan
This week I listened to heart hurt. Sitting in conversation, I could see the hesitation before the outpouring, the pause trying to gauge how much to share. The measurement of vulnerability. I sat and listened, they sat and spoke. And as they spoke, entrusting me with their grief, I felt my heart twist with empathy, tears sat in wait. And their words of hurt connected to words of hurt in my own life. Because grief recognizes grief. We could go into the science of it all, the mirror neurons and physicality of it. But really what it comes down to is this simple truth: if you’re truly loving people well, it’s going to hurt.
There are no getting around it. And while there are few guarantees in life, this, I can assure you, is one of them: You can’t be “all in” on loving people well and get out without feeling the weight of living in a world that is broken.
This is in no way endorsing that loving people well should hurt you personally or encourage staying in situations that are toxic and harmful. That should never be the cost of loving well.
But loving well hurts because to love well, we have to carry hurt with each other. And loving well looks like rolling up sleeves and doing life right alongside someone.
Years ago, when I sat in a season of figuring out a direction, I prayed this sentence and wrote it out as a desire for my life:
God, break my heart by what breaks yours.
I want to see beyond myself. I want to love what God loves. I want to seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8).
We have a God of justice and injustice breaks His heart.
Loving people well is going to hurt. It’s messy and imperfect. It isn’t tidy and isn’t contained by calendars and clocks. It looks like holding hands while letting someone cry. It looks like not having words but being present. It looks making soup, helping with errands, and being there when it counts.
Loving people well is going to hurt. It’s messy and imperfect. It isn’t tidy and isn’t contained by calendars and clocks. It looks like holding hands while letting someone cry. It looks like not having words but being present. It looks making soup, helping with errands, and being there when it counts.
Loving well is not something you can schedule in. You don’t get to tell someone when they are bleeding and when they are not. And between the wake of a pandemic and long overdue focus on racial injustice in the United States, there is a need more than ever to really sit with people, really hear and see and sit together in it. Because that’s what love looks like.
Loving well will cause an ache in your heart, bring tears to your eyes. Your gut reaction will be to pull away, to retreat to what’s comfortable and what’s safe. But loving people well is our calling, it’s in our wiring and it’s important. We are made for community and must lean in, press into it even when it aches.
Our prayer must continue to go back to this simple plea: “God, break my heart by what breaks yours.” And from the very Author of Love, we might just learn how to love better and to have the strength to do it again every day.