Love is pain. I’ve heard that saying for many years. It never really  made sense to me until the last year or so. I guess I had never really thought about what that actually meant. I always saw it as a negative thing, that love would always be something to cause me pain in all the wrong ways. I never considered that love brings out a pain that has the ability to help us gain understanding and even a greater love for those we care about. When I changed my perspective on this, the way that I looked at love in general changed.

Yes, love is pain. If we choose to love we are accepting the fact that at some point we are going to experience pain because of the love we have for others. We will feel pain and there is no way around it. We will feel pain when our lover has a terrible day and just needs to collapse in our arms and cry. We will feel pain when our children get their hearts broken for the first time and all we can do is sit with them and cry too. We will feel pain when we have an argument and it doesn’t get resolved before we say goodnight. We will feel pain when our best friend gets cheated on and calls us at 2am in tears and we know that there is nothing that we can say to make it better.

But, the pain that we feel in all of those situations is a reminder. It is a reminder that we do care, that we do love and that we chose to feel that pain for the people that we love. We chose them and all the things that come with it. It reminds us that our love can heal another soul just by caring about that person, just by being there to share the burden of their pain. Having the ability to make sure another person knows that they are loved and that they are not alone is one of the greatest gifts we have to give.

It also teaches us that no matter how hard love can be, no matter how painful it can be, we can always still love. We can always make the choice to love over and over again.  It is something without limits or boundaries if we allow it to be. There is no limit to the love we can give or receive. Love is selfless. Love is what we were created from and it is what we were created for.