To love is to risk it all

It's insane how quickly fear crept into my engagement.

Before I had my new piece of jewelry, my biggest fear was loneliness. But when Hayden and I vowed to commit our lives together, my biggest fear switched to losing him.

My mind swirled with possibilities. What if he dies? What if he's in an accident and hurt beyond repair? What if something happens to me? What would I do? How would I handle it? Would he be okay?

I'm 100% confident he won't abandon ship of his own free will. But we can't control accidents. That's why they're called accidents. I realized that loving someone meant you wanted to protect them from anything that could potentially cause them harm.

Loving him is a risk because anything could happen to him. It's the greatest risk I've ever taken. I willfully chose to love him and now I have to accept that the Lord will take care of us, come what may. It hurts to even write those last words. "Come what may." What a weird idea.

This is so different than handing my future over to God or trusting him with money or whatever. This is another person. Someone who I care for deeply, who I love wholly. The idea of him not being with me feels like someone is twisting my gut.

But I've thought of two things to deal with this.

The first is that I cannot live the next lifetime with Hayden in fear that something will happen to him. I cannot protect him from everything–or most things–and thus lose that control to protect myself. His pain hurts me. Living in fear of losing him is no way to live. It's putting all my hope and trust in a human who will fail me somehow. And that's not what I'm called to.

The second is much loftier.

God created mankind with this impossible, incomprehensible love. And we hurt ourselves constantly. We actively fight against him. He saw the part of creation he made in his image being lost to sin. And he wouldn't have it. He sent a rescuer, someone to cast a lifeline to us so we wouldn't be forever separated from Him.

So few people have grabbed onto Jesus. The heart of the Lord aches for his lost children because of his great love for us.

You should know that I feel this way about all my family and friends. Losing any one of them would be devastating. But it hit a high point when Hayden became a solid part of my future.

How do I not live in fear of loss?

Because Christ is enough.