Vulnerable Love

My weekend moment?.... included too much thinking these past 2 days.
But I think it was the good type of thinking.

(Well...I'm hoping that good may happen in SPITE of all that thinking:)
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Lately I've seen myself become dependent upon other's acceptance of me as a way to fill me. I thought this was a teenage thing...something I grew out of way back when. But shockingly I've found myself right back in the same spot...feeling a sense of unworthiness if I can't control a situation or be liked in another. In turn I have found myself backing off of relationships, tired of hurting -or hurting others.

This weekend I had an "A HA!" moment. One of those moments where you hear or read something that applies to the situation you're in....and it all of a sudden clicks. Do you ever get those?

Ironically, I opened a book (which I haven't picked up in a very long time),  to a page which held the exact words I needed to hear (read):

"For a woman to enjoy relationship, she must give up her need to control and her insistence that people fill her." (Captivating, by John & Stasi Eldridge)

I've been seeing relationships in my life become stilted, awkward, even ending, over this very thing.

And then...another thing that completely caught my attention was a paragraph written by C.S.Lewis,

(The Four Loves):

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it careful round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable....The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love....is hell.

Wow.

And here it clicked.

What wonderful things to come upon while I meander down this road of thought on relationships with others.

It was a good part to my weekend.

(Today is the draw for the Spring Giveaway...Tomorrow 5 of you will have a package in the mail!)