"...and have not love..."

Love. Hard to define. Hard to re-find.

It's been many, many years since I truly loved.

I can remember the last time I completely loved. He was everything I thought I wanted in a guy then. Good looking yet average, a relaxed and funny guy, and we connected really well. Yet a few months later he literally drove me away, hurt me very badly, made me feel like the lowest of the low. We stayed friends, but my heart-damage was permanent. Sometimes I still wonder where he is and what he's doing - and if he's found someone to be with.

I almost-loved once after that. I thought it was love, and perhaps it was. It persevered in spite of some pretty hectic obstacles, and there may still be a trace of it somewhere, just needing proper care to be fanned into a fire again.

But having my heart progressively scarred in the past has left me with little or no capacity to feel love. It's like a protective layer has formed around that bit of me, not letting me truly invest in anything or anyone. Or like I've just forgotten how to love. Everything's surface, there's nothing real deep. I don't connect with my heart and soul anymore, nor do I let anyone in close. I don't miss people - when they're gone, they're just no longer there. I love my son, but sometimes I think not as much as it should and could be.

Not loving fully is perhaps the reason I'm so happy to be single, and content to be so forever if need be. I don't feel the need for the love of another, nor the need to give love to another. I don't even want it - and all the talk of "companionship in old age" goes over my head.

Unfortunately, the entire gospel, and my living out of it, rests on love. "The greatest of these is love." "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul." "Love your neighbour as yourself." "If you have not love, you're nothing more than an irritating noise."

Great...

What am I supposed to do with the gospel if I just simply can't love, if it doesn't seem to really exist in me anymore? How am I supposed to love God when I can't muster up love for anything or anyone else? It just seems so impossible. I can't seem to get through that thick skin, that scar tissue around my heart, to open it up to love.

Trouble is, if I don't find a way there's no way I'm going to be able to truly live out the gospel to those around me - to my family, my friends, just strangers I come into contact with. I won't be able to invest myself in true and deep relationships with others, or even find those connections that could lead to something more - that community of believers journeying together that I would like to be part of.

Without love, it's all just gestures - empty gestures of niceness, of goodness, without the real stuff backing it up and making it worthwhile.

I don't even know where to start to get that love thing back in my life and in my heart. I can't see the end of the string to unravel it. And I don't know if I really want to. If it's worth the potential hurts opening up will bring. If I want to be that vulnerable ever again.

Or if I just want to carry on being hard and cold and unmoved forever, never getting burned, but also never feeling that burning passion - ever.

I'm scared to ask God about this - scared what His response might be, or how it will change me. It's so much easier to stay where I am, safe from feeling too much.