Risky Business

I continue to be amazed by how many aspects of my life continue to be effected for the better by my willingness to grieve. My willingness to grieve has brought about redemption and new beginnings in many new ways. Over the last several months God has been redeeming the havoc that not grieving wrecked on a friendship. Being authentic and vulnerable is hard work. I think its hard work because we don’t always know the end result – which makes it risky. Being willing to be authentic and vulnerable with others is risky business, risky for me because I don’t want to risk everything just to lose it.

In my journey of learning to grieve I came across this quote;

"The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief - But the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love."

I think that what I am learning is this; to take a risk on the fact that just because one risks loving doesn’t mean that one will always lose. I have experienced great loss, which led me to stop risking – to stop loving, which taught me that all ventures into risking love would ultimately end in loss. Although the verdict is definitely still out on this one, I have decided that I need to start claiming and making agreements with the fact that risking love doesn’t mean that it has to be lost. I think I need to be realistic in that sometimes I will risk love, be vulnerable & authentic, and I will still lose, leaving me with yet another piece of brokenness to grieve. But I have to learn to have more hope in the process of loving. If I expect it to fail and to lose then all I’m doing is speaking lies over myself and my relationships.

Even in being more willing to risk love, I have found that I risk with a preparation of loss. If I risk with loss in mind then I can’t possibly be fully authentic in that relationship, which means that in all reality I’m actually not really risking all that I think I am.

Thus the challenge of the week is to evaluate where I’m risking with loss in mind.

Because God is in the business of restoration I am blessed to be experiencing a new friendship; a friendship that has been long overdue, overdue because of my own inability to grieve and risk loving. I don’t really know what God has in store for this friendship, but I have reason to believe that He’s going to continue using it to do some pretty great things in my life, but in order to receive the blessings of that friendship I’m pretty sure I have to engage in some risky business.