Why Is Love So Damn Hard?

Be Thankful for the Last of Things

This morning, I was in a funk. I opened a Father’s Day card I thought I’d mail to my ninety-three-year-old dad. But instead of blank, the inside was filled with a note I’d written last year to my husband. At the time he was trying so so hard to recover from the serious, neck-breaking car crash that nearly killed him. Although he lived six months longer, he was never the same.

I still couldn’t cry but today my insides clutched fiercely. I’ll get a different card mailed to Dad, but my encounter with the last card I’d ever write to my husband rattled me. I could feel myself pulling away from love, a tide sucking sand from beneath my toes. The sun shone, birds sang and flowers bloomed but I couldn’t shake sadness. If love had to hurt that much, I didn’t want anything to do with it.

On June 9^th, my Marine will have been gone for six months.

During these months, I’ve experienced emotions from A to Z. My husband’s death in December was a curve ball I didn’t see coming, although he’d been on the downhill slide for a while. Paired with certain daily governmental folly and the day-to-day ridiculous snafus of American life, my emotions have bounced all over the place.

Grief sure plays fast and loose with the heart, drowning it in sadness one moment and being flaming mad at the world the next. I’ve felt like a yo-yo that couldn’t quite walk the dog. Some days I wish I could break down. Other times, fair warning, don’t look at me crossways or I’ll explode.

From mild irritation to abject hate, eye-rolling snark to poison-tongued invectives, I can’t seem to get a handle on how to feel. Even the gratitude habit I was working on so faithfully with my Substack buddy, Diana Butler Bass, has fallen into the toilet. The political scene is more ridiculous and more dangerous all the time. Yikes doesn’t begin to cover my current angst. On top of that, a friend’s dog has melanoma cancer. My mood tends to be furious with a side of sorrow.

Why it’s so hard to love, to keep on loving, and why in the heck am I so bad at it?

I really expected the Good Lord to pat me on the back and tell me I’m doing a great job on this love thing. But when I dug a little deeper, I saw stuff I really didn’t like about myself—what Richard Rohr calls the “shadow self.” It’s the part of every person that desperately tries to control everything so the fragile ego can feel good. Except that our shadow selves tend to run to the dark side. Yep, even the saintliest saint has a shadow side.

Instead of boring you with all my shortcomings, which are legion, maybe it’s time for a little love refresher. When loss, grief or suffering plunges us into the abyss, God tosses out a lifeline shaped like love. But when you’re so far offshore that you wouldn’t know love even if it smacked you in the head, God first has to get your attention.

Love requires you to be vulnerable. Yikes.

When humans like me get caught in the corn maze of grief, loss or suffering, love can seem near impossible, like a crop circle you’re sure is engineered by aliens who want to shove you through a wormhole of evil, never to return.

Putting aliens aside even though they just so happen to resemble some of the worst politicians, I tell God OK I’m listening now. Almighty smiles and says, first of all, love isn’t cheap.

I try not to look stunned.

“Oh, yes, it’ll cost you. Big time.”

I whisper, “How do I get there? I mean, how do I stay loving for more than a minute or two?”

“Stop obsessing over politics.”

“Besides that.”

“You could start with gratitude.”

Note to self: look for little pink gratitude dish you bought after Diana Butler Bass’ suggestion.

Giant thunderclap. “I meant by actually being grateful.”

“Oh.” Shadow-self pipes up. Like the Big Guy forgot that I’m a recent widow, consumed by grief?

If God has eyebrows, they’re definitely furrowed. “Go out to the mailbox.”

I do and here’s an envelope from a friend. She thanks me for coming to her very cool birthday party last month. I smile, thankful as hell to know her. Her note says she loves me. By the grace of God, she loves me.

I wander back into the house, my steps lighter than before. I’d love to ask God if that’s it, that all I need is to look around me and keep being grateful, even if I never find the pink dish.

But to love you have to be vulnerable. Love costs everything and some things suck anyway. I mean, that poor dog still has melanoma. I know a whole passel of widows and widowers. Some things are downright sad, and some things still require righteous indignation and protests with cool homemade signs.

Loving takes work too. When things fall apart, love’s even harder to maintain. Maybe that’s why our grandparents, who lived through the Great Depression said to count your blessings and eat your peas.

My funk finally lifts like fog that doesn’t burn off until late afternoon. I tuck the Father’s Day card and my friend’s note under my pillow to help me remember to be grateful and loving. I may even fall asleep counting my blessings. That kind of love isn’t hard at all.