"Conceal it, don't feel it." That's what Elsa's father tells her to do to control her emotions and thereby, her powers in the hit movie, "Frozen". '
And sometimes that's what we tell ourselves. We put up walls to protect ourselves at all costs, so that we don't feel pain that others can afflict us with.
C. S. Lewis says that to love anything at all is to be vulnerable. To love even a pet, we need to give something of ourselves for it to truly be love, as love was intended. If we take the vulnerability away, it's no longer love. Real love demands investing oneself and the willingness to sacrifice.
If we try to protect ourselves and lock our hearts away, we start to become hardened and callous. Nothing moves us any more. Sure, we protect ourselves, but we also slowly but surely become incapable of true love.
So with that very real possibility of being hurt, how do we bring ourselves to dare to love?
We remember that we love because He first loved us. Fully knowing that so many of us would reject His life-altering sacrifice of His Son to save us from sin, the Father dared to love. Jesus gave Himself completely, holding nothing back, not even His life, fully knowing that hardened, callous hearts would turn away from Him.
And so we love - investing ourselves, with every possibility of being hurt and ripped apart. And when it does happen, when we do get hurt, we don't shield ourselves. We feel the pain in all its ugliness and misery, and then give it over to God, to allow Him to use it to build in us patience, humility, perseverance, forgiveness, grace and the ability to keep on loving.
So don't shy away from the pain and the grief of being hurt by someone you love. Don't let the devil's lies of being undeserving of it and of self-pity and hatred fill you up. Because this pain can build in you so much that nothing else can, if only you would allow the Lord to use that pain to transform you.
And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore you, secure you, strengthen you, and establish you - 1 Peter 5:10