I've been told far too many times I 'feel' too deeply.I wonder how many others have been told a story like this and rather than choosing to read a little further into our stories we've handed over something of strength.  I can remember armoring up my heart in an attempt to not feel.And when it came to love my feelings were so twisted up in what I saw and had experienced that I mistook it for something radically different from what it really is.I thought love was simply a feeling two people experienced and tried their hardest to keep alive. For years I doubted one's ability to remain faithful to this kind of thing...As I thought love equated physical intimacy and this truly scared the brokenness within me.Because most of what I saw around me was full of broken hearts and broken promises with a whole lot of hidden secrets sewn into them.Although there was something deep inside me that longed to be known and loved...I didn't know how to reconcile this with how I'd been defining love.And then it happened, one day when I met this guy who began inviting me to unravel pieces of my soul and as I did he gently massaged it. His affections for me were demonstrated with such respect-full-ness and tenderness my heart felt the beginning of it's healing.  I hadn't ever experienced this before but I knew I wanted more of it...As we continued trading our stories I began realizing that love was not the romantic notion I had conjured up in my heart, it was so much more. It involved the peering in of another and recognizing a heart that was beautifully made in the image of its maker... I was finding just how much our souls long for trusted vulnerability...Because vulnerability in its most truest of state is something of great value and worth...It's taking all the hard of someone's life with the holy pieces.It's removing the shrapnel of another's heart and mending its wounds.It's listening and hearing someone's story and holding it near.It's carrying a friend to the One who can heal and make them whole.It's disregarding our wants and needs to attend to someone else's.It's sometimes leading and many other times spent following.It's all inclusive because exclusivity really has no place in its midst.It's finding out our hearts might be broken and accepting the healing that is offered to us.Friends, it can be found all around us if we look hard enough we'll find we're encircled with a world searching to be deeply known...you can see it in the eyes of the cashier who's carrying a heavy load...or in the hallways of our offices and schools...you'll even see it in the millions of lonely people visiting corner cafes hoping to be seen or heard. And if I'm being completely transparent this heart of mine has felt like I've walked through way too many days with a heart that's undone. Because...I never realized the wounds of heart need love and they need healing for them to not ache so deeply and feel like they're always being re-wounded. I never realized my heart when it was formed in the secret places of my mother's womb was beautifully molded without even a blemish.I never realized a heart is not meant to ache every second it sits in your chest, that God created it to have moments of joy and of peace too.I never realized any of this because the mess I'd been burying and covering up needed to be dug out in order for the vessels of my heart to flow blood through my veins as it's designed to do. I never realized any of this because for far too long I believed I was made to be broken and that love was somehow broken too. And it wasn't until God showed me through those he'd surrounded me with that his intention for all of us was something that was so much more than this. That love in its most beautiful form is found in one life that's given for another's to be found. Because love breaks us wide open and returns us back to who we were created to be ...love perseveres through the hardest and even the best of days...love does what nothing else can ever do- - -it heals, it restores and it causes us to never forget its undying power to revive a heart that's barely beating. Let us be the love our world needs...even when its hard and it hurts...or we feel all too broken...for love will forever heal!