Time and space do not heal everything
Love, trust, and compromise do.
Needing time and space to process your emotions is one thing, but saving time by acknowledging the mess with courage is another. You don’t have to rush healing, but you have to be brave in order to initiate important changes. Sometimes, the choices that make you uncomfortable at first are the ones that set you free in the end.
You may no longer know where to start because perhaps, you believe that everything has been messed up for too long. You no longer recognize the situations that still exist.
You may have avoided confrontations because you have lost faith in people. You feel that everyone will eventually give up on you — that they won’t accept the way you are.
You may have repressed emotions, experienced heartbreaks, and sever attachments — afraid your feelings wouldn’t matter to the people involved.
You may have been scared of the way you deeply value people, but that depth is the exact reason why your experiences are valid. You were hurt for a heartfelt reason — a reason that reveals so much about who you are, who the people that hurt you are, and how strong were the bridges you were able to build but let burn.
You may have been afraid of opening your heart again because the more people you let in, the more you get hurt. But remember that getting hurt is the only way you can know that you are capable of love. Whoever that has never been hurt before, has never loved at all.
It is by loving others that we entrust them with the unknown capacity to know what truly hurts us.
It takes courage to share our vulnerabilities because we also give others the opportunity to use them against us. This requires the consistent earning of trust that can only be done by risking your heart on a trial and error basis — to which you may either win or lose.
Trusting people after they’ve broken your trust would never be easy. Most of the time, giving chances is even seen as a weakness. Your mind will keep telling you to stop trusting again. It will tell you to avoid what hurt you. However, compromise is the only thing that can reasonably tell you when to trust again.
Just because people hurt you once, doesn’t mean they will do it again. All of us are capable of growth. Our chances to grow are the reasons why in every relationship, there are chances for mutual giving of compromise.
The bravest choice is to always humbly compromise because this is the way you could accept that people make mistakes, and at some point, you were also the reason why everything ended all messed up. This isn’t a sign of weakness. After getting hurt, it takes strength to admit that we still need others.
Surviving alone may feel liberating at first, but you will eventually realize that it is also limiting. It limits your growth, resilience, and character. It makes you want to believe that you don’t need help — when you actually do and in reality, you won’t ever stop needing it.
All of us lack things, which give us the reasons to need others. We are all wounded by some things that only love can heal.
There are moments that end sooner than you can make them last. There are people who leave faster than you can let them go. There are bonds that break easier than you can build them strong. There are investments that lead to more losses than just how much you can give up. And there are hearts that get damaged further before they even get fixed.
But that is the reality of life. Sometimes, there is no one to blame but yourself — for loving too much, for caring too much, or for expecting too much. The way towards healing is to forgive yourself. Because you can only fully forgive others once you begin to accept that there are people who simply can’t give as much as you are capable of giving. You don’t want to let unappreciated efforts and unreciprocated investments get the best of your ability to always offer only the best of the love you can ever give. After all, life is too short for you to not take advantage of every opportunity to openly give the best from your heart.
Most things can only be enjoyed while they last; life itself can only be enjoyed while it lasts. Yet love is unlimited and free. No matter how many times you get hurt, live in the moment by first being thankful for having conquered difficult paths to cross, for having faced daunting trials to pass, and for having met different people to love.
In the end, the strongest person is the one who is always compromising, trusting, and loving unconditionally — one who gets hurt yet never stops.
We love because He first loved us. We trust because He first believed in our hearts. We forgive because He first died for us.
