love.

via

Love is a beautiful thing. But it is also a scary thing. It’s terrifying and difficult.

It isn’t about passion or butterflies. It’s not about romance and candles and foo foo. It’s about getting to the root of another person and choosing to cherish them…when they annoy you and when they entertain you, when they frustrate you and when they delight you, when they let you down and when they surprise you, when they make you cry and when they make you smile. 

I’m so leery of other people’s relationships. I’ve seen so many fail. I’ve had my own fail. Even when I thought I loved as much as I could, everything that I believed in came crashing down around me.

I guess that’s the thing about love that I’m still figuring out. It doesn’t always go how you plan. Planning, in fact, seems to stifle and hinder love from flourishing. And when things don’t go according to plan, the immediate (and lingering) response is to discontinue belief in the existence, reality, or even possibility of love. When, truly, it isn’t love that is fallible, it is human beings.

It is you.

And it is me.

But love never fails.