"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish it's source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings." (anais nin) what do i do with my heart in a world like this? i need love, and to be content with God's love is scary and hard because i can't see him. i can't touch him. i can't feel him. but He's all i got sometimes and so i risk it because i HAVE to. no other choice. and the second there is another choice, i tend to go with it. a boy that says he'll love me forever. the thought that maybe my appearance will get me somewhere. cash i will probably make as a doctor. anything that i can hold on to, that won't change on me and leave me hanging. so essentially i'm constantly betrayed because all things change. all things but God. it's a scary choice, but it's my only choice. it's that necessary ledge i come to when i understand suddenly that things might not turn out the way i had planned. i keep asking myself when i can finally relax, when i can finally lean back and be safe in my vulnerability? the answer is that there will never be a time on this earth that pain can't show up. it's an unavoidable part of life, and yet living on guard for the next heartbreak is not living at all. so i live, and i am real, and i put the fear aside. i'm mentoring a group of freshman girls, and tonight this is what we're talking about. there's this lie that we tell ourselves, that if we are more careful next time we won't hurt so bad. but the truth is that we can't secure ourselves from pain by being less of who we are. and today as i remember that, i am invincibly, amazingly free.