Love Hurts

"Love hurts, love scars,
Love wounds, and mars . . ."

I like this Bryant and Boudleaux song (my favorite version is by Emmylou Harris). It sounds ironic, since love is supposed to be happy and joyful rather than painful.

But it's true. Love hurts.

Yesterday morning, just before stepping into a day full of meetings, Emily called me to say that our 12-year-old grandson just had a seizure and was being rushed to the hospital. Jacob is diabetic, and it turns out that he had a severe drop in blood sugar and his insulin pump wasn't connected. All his tests came out normal and he was home that afternoon.

But the news that morning disrupted everything inside of me. I dearly love my kids and grandkids. Jacob is the firstborn grandchild and was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes at age 3. He's a strong and brave kid, and all of the medical stuff he's had to endure gives him a special place of concern in the hearts of all the family members. Hearing that he had become helpless--even for a few minutes--and was at risk caused a physical sensation in me. It actually hurt. Love hurts.

I am reminded in this that we can avoid things like broken relationships, loss of loved ones, betrayal and so on if we could just not love. Without love, those things have no fertile ground. Without love, people cannot harm us. They cannot betray us. We won't feel the pain of loss when they leave or die. For those things to happen, love has to exist.

The pain that we all felt yesterday at the news of Jacob's plight was medicated in the afternoon by the sound of his voice on a phone, through our visits to see him at home, and a return to some kind of normalcy that let us rest for a while. But even this morning, the residual pain is still there.

We're told in the Bible that love is found, not in how we love, but in how God loves. All of the pain and loss we can endure and inflict comes after God has already loved. Much of what I've learned in studying the Bible can be summed up this way:

Love hurts.