Everything is Planned to Teach Me Love

Some days as I go through my affirmations, one will particularly resonate with me, and then it hangs in the back of my mind all day. Today when I got to "Everything is planned to teach me love," the statement wouldn't let go of me and whispered to me all day.

Even before I got to the office, I was pondering, "Why does something need to teach me love?"  The immediate answer seemed to be that I don't know love.  When I focus on breathing into my heart, I am sure the "vibration" that I feel is God's love.  By extension, since I believe that we are all connected through God's love, I am sure that it should be the same or similar.

Yet, I don't know that I've experienced that feeling with any human being when I know I should feel it with all human beings.  Hmmm...  Maybe I don't know love, or don't know how to feel love.  Or, just maybe, I've guarded myself so that I shut others out.  Ouch!  That again.

I believe that part of our basic equipment as humans is to be able to give and receive love.  Is it possible that my equipment is so under-used and rusted that it has forgotten what is basically human?

One of my favorite little books is one that has been around for awhile, called The Knight in Rusty Armor (Robert Fisher.) The book relates a parable about a knight who has lived in his armor so long that he can no longer take it off at the end of the day when he is done doing battle.  Only when he weeps at not being able to hug his family do his tears cause pieces of his armor to drop off. 

I sense his experience may be similar to what occurs to well guarded hearts, like mine.  I haven't cried...yet. I have been overwhelmed with a deep sense of loss about all the people I have "loved" intellectually in my life but for whom I have thought it was just too risky to really open my heart. Well, I didn't really "think" the risk part in a conscious sort of way.  I am pretty certain, though, that it was happening in a less-than-conscious way. Now I realize that whatever damage I thought might be done to my heart could only be exceed by the sadness at not having really let "my people" in. 

I feel like a toddler at this, taking my first wobbly steps.  I am certain that I need something to hang onto as I steady myself, and my heart tells me that something will be God's love--it will be my compass teaching me love.