When I think of love hurting, I think about the first few lines of the Nazareth song, "Love Hurts." I've had a hard time accepting and understanding that love can hurt you. To protect myself, I've put up a protective shield, but as I break that shield down, I make myself vulnerable to pain.

Now I see that loving has an equal and opposite reaction. The more you love someone or something, the deeper the hurt is than something you care little for. Love will hurt you over time or suddenly. You may be in a disintegrating relationship, lose a job you love, discover a close friend is lying to you, put your heart into a project that fails. Worst of all is the grief that comes from losing someone you love. Grief seems to be the most painful side of love. 

Love is a double-edged sword that can make you feel on top of the world, or buried beneath it. I want to share all my love with the people who need it and encourage you to pay it forward today because you can.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully 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. To love is to be vulnerable.” ~C.S.Lewis