Norma, I was struck while reading what you wrote, and not sure I'll explain it right, how if this is how WE feel when we love, and loving makes us compassionate, and grieves us and breaks us - then, God who loves us so much more, well how much must it break Him and grieve Him and hurt Him to see us hurting??? And just for a second there, I was struck with some kind of understanding or feeling of the deepness of God's love.

Yes love hurts - it's a risk, it isn't always rewarded, it's damn hard - everything you said above, true. And even so much harder to "love" people we don't like....like you said, easier not to love. Love turns us inside out.

But hate, is so cold and dark and alone and I don't want to imagine a world without love in it.

Norma, I understand your point. Thanks for sharing it. To me, loving does not guarantee we can solve others' problems. But to understand others, to share good and bad times, to care for one another, etc., it makes life worthwhile!

Yeah, it's a double-edged sword. But LOVE makes us better persons !

Norma, I felt the same way after my parents died. It hurt so badly that I couldn't remember what the point was of loving someone with all your heart and then, bam, in the blink of an eye, they're gone with no good-bye, no word at all. How can someone so vital to your existence for so long suddenly be so utterly silent and so completely gone?!

How I wrestled long and hard with that whole Life/Death/Life cycle we all go through, not just when someone significant dies, but every day in so many ways with so many people and relationships, including self and God.

It wasn't easy. I wanted to stop loving. I wanted to retreat into a safe cabin deep in the woods somewhere remote and never come back out. But I chose to stay and wrestle it through. I'm no closer to being happy about the Death part of the cycle, but I know that Love/Life is the only choice for me now. I'd rather be in agony over loving someone than in agony over hating someone - or in an entirely different kind of agony because I never got to know anyone at all.

You're right, it's a double-edged sword, and all too often we feel the sting of the harsher edge of love...we put our hearts out there, pour our care and support into others' lives, and get called names we don't deserve and get misunderstood by people who don't have a clue and could care less who we really are underneath our words and wounds...it's daunting, frustratingly pointless at time, depressing if that's all we experience over a long period of time...but I think we will hurt either way, whether we love or withdraw and choose not to love.

All I can do is take it one day, one person, one encounter at a time, be the best (I personally translate that into "kindest") person I can be at that moment, which admittedly won't always be palatable to the other, and hope that we ripple even a feeble flicker of love and light instead of hatred and darkness into those encounters.

In the end, after all I've read and researched, the best philosophy for me personally still comes back to the Golden Rule I learned in early childhood, trying to treat others with the same respect and kindness I want others to show me. It ain't easy, never will be, but we're all still a work-in-progress and trying to get through each day as best as we can.

[ January 31, 2006, 01:59 PM: Message edited by: Eagle Heart ]

I think all of us are 'one and the same' in more ways then not ...eventually knowing both joy and deep sorrow... and each of us repeatedly face the temptation to protect ourselves as you said Eagleheart .. maybe in small ways, and maybe by turning completely to stone..... I think there have been and still are, those who have chosen to become as stone... able to feel no compassion and to crush..... maybe in the long run those are the ones to be truly pitied.... for surely they too, must have wanted the good that love also brings.....
Evie and Songbird and Eagleheart ...thank you for understanding.... for sharing....

[ January 31, 2006, 07:01 PM: Message edited by: norma ]

norma, soemthing I have learned over and over again while reading almost 600 stories submitted by baby boomer women, and by reading these forums day in and day out is that we have more similarities than differences. Hands down! And that brings me tremendous joy.

I wish all universal members could grasp this. There would be so much more peace on earth.

Dotsie,I'm with you! If we could only embrace our similarities and put aside our differences, what a loving world this would be!

Amen sister!

Dotsie and Songbird,
As long as there are humans existing on the face of this earth, there will be differences. I for one am so glad that we aren't all alike and that we don't all agree on everything.
If we did, this website wouldn't be necessary. I have learned a lot from the ladies and hearing their feelings, beliefs and seeing their attitudes has stimulated me into reexamining what my core beliefs really are and embracing them once again.
I have all of the ladies to thank for that and sincerely hope we can continue to agree to not agree on all issues.
A good friend of mine was in an anger management class. One of the things they taught him was, we become angry when someone doesn't do something the way WE think they should or when someone doesn't think the way WE think they should.
Any time I feel anger, I ask myself, "Do I feel this way because this person isn't doing or thinking the way I want them to?"
The answer is usually "yes".
Thank you for allowing me to have a voice within this group and I will sincerely try to couch my statements in a way that won't inflame anyone's anger.