Love Like You'll Never Get Hurt

Here's a quick update on the adoption process. We took our last class today and had the home-study this past Thursday. They told us we should be licensed in 2-3 weeks. This is very exciting and scary at the same time! But we can handle this with God's help, or maybe I should say God can handle it with our help. That's really the way it all works. There is so much new territory coming to us since we will potentially go from zero kids to a house-full. Just so you all know, once we are licensed, the adoption coordinator will send us profiles of kids that meet our requirements and we decide if we want our home-study submitted for those kids. CPS gets home-studies from all the agencies and decides who will be matched with the kids based on that information they have. At that point we just pray that God will match us with our kids and we trust for his perfect will. The home-study went well, I think. There were no questions we didn't kind of anticipate or know were coming. How were we raised, what we would do differently from our parents, what are our strengths, etc. I was able to ask some logistics questions and I feel much better. Mala told us that since we are straight adoption, we will have plenty of time to get the rooms ready once we meet the kids so they can be painted/decorated according to their likes and styles. She also told me we'd have plenty of time to get car seats and that kind of logistical thing. We have two empty rooms, but they are in no way ready for kids at this point. They are basically empty, but we are waiting until we know the genders, ages, etc of kids we are matched with. My dad got a cabinet installed in our laundry room so we could store poisons out of reach and have a place to lock up meds (state requirement). Yippee! Nothing is currently locked, but nothing needs to be at this point and we are ready when that comes. Ok, now to the topic of my post. Many years ago (I don't actually know how long ago) my Pastor/Uncle went on a trip and brought back some small gifts for me and my sister. This time he brought these little marble plaques with sayings on them. Mine said "Love Like You'll Never Get Hurt." I love that saying. When we are hurt, either on purpose or accidentally, we tend to hold those hurts for a long time. We let it change the way we treat the offender and change the way we think about them. We live with more reserve, more caution, afraid that anything we do will cause us to be hurt again. It hinders us from being passionate and giving ourselves fully to many things in our lives. I have always taken this saying to mean forgive and move on past your hurt. I have realized it isn't just about forgiving the person who hurt you, which we need to do, but we have to forgive ourselves for anything we may have done to bring on the hurt. I am not saying it is ever our fault when someone hurts us, but depending on the situation, after we have forgiven the offender, we often look back at the situation and say, "if only I wouldn't have.... then I wouldn't have been so hurt" or "if I would have done....I would have healed faster and moved on." By asking ourselves these questions and re-living the moment time and time again, we haven't forgiven ourselves. There are multiple things going on with me that have initiated me asking myself the question, "Do I love fully? Can I love with every fiber of my being, knowing that I will get hurt again, but not letting those past things hinder my love?" God created us to be people of total abandon, loving without regret and without holding anything back. Am I doing that? My kids, my friends, my family deserve my love. God deserves my all. I refuse to hold myself back, selfishly, in case I may get hurt. I am determined to love completely, to give myself fully to whatever God is calling me. I will put my heart out there, because if I don't, I'm not really living. I'm not really loving as if I'll never get hurt.