"How we walk with the broken speaks louder than how we sit with the great."
I'll be totally honest about something: it can be hard and frustrating and painful to love broken people. It's hard to care for someone who exudes negativity. It's challenging to deliberately pursue a person who pushes others away in the name of survival. It's painful to know that even when you do all you can to love a broken person, that person could still reject you.
And it breaks my heart and embarrasses me to write all of that because I've most definitely been the person who's excruciatingly hard to love. I've done the rejecting and the pushing away and the negativity. And I've wound up mostly alone, which, ironically, was the last thing I wanted. It's easy to wind up alone when you're broken, because sometimes it simply takes too much energy, too much heartache, too much everything to love someone who's hurting. I know that. I've been that difficult, difficult person.
But as the meme suggests --and as the message of Easter teaches-- love is always worth the risk.
So show up. Be present. Listen. Pray. And love, even when it's the last thing you want to do, and even when you think the recipient doesn't notice or care about what you're doing. (And if you're the one who's hurting, try really hard to let yourself be loved. I know that's far easier said than done.) What I remind myself when it feels like I'm spinning my wheels to no avail is that He sees all. And if He could die for ME, the least I can do is sacrifice a little of myself for someone else.
