Love wins

There's just no understanding loss, or how it will affect you.  Life is full of winning and losing, making choices and taking responsibility, living life together and alone.

I'm a fairly cautious person.  I like things that are reliable and stable.  That works for some things. Unfortunately, not for things that involve people.  People are the "wild card" in our lives.  For the most part, you can't train them.  You can't force them to stay with you.  Or make them love you.  Or trust them to never hurt you.

My family is suffering the loss of someone we love.  No one died.  She just chose to move on.  There was no warning.  No precipitous fight or obvious breakdown of relationship.  Just blind-sided.

I feel lost.

I feel the loss of her as though she were my own child.  I'm lost as to how to process these feelings. I'm lost as a parent.  How do I help my child through this?  This is so out of my realm of experience.  I tend to be more of a burn-the-bridge kind of person.  You know the type.  Just cut and run.

But I can't do that this time.

I know she's in pain, too.  Deep down inside.  Perhaps too deep right now for her to even acknowledge. She needs stability and reliability, to know people who love her will stay, even when she tries her hardest to drive them away.

So, here I stand, in the middle of all the insults being hurled at me, trying to keep being an adult.  Trying not to lash out when accusations fly.  Trying to maintain my calm instead of going Rambo on the person causing my child so much pain.

Love wins.  Always.

I'm not talking romantic love.  Genuine love.  The kind that wants better for the other person.  The kind that looks beyond the hurt to see the pain.  The kind that makes all efforts to understand what is going on on the inside, and not judge by outward actions.   That kind of love WILL win.

It has to.