risk

I was talking to a friend the other day about how terrifying this world can be. She agreed and then said something I’ve been thinking about ever since: “I wonder if every decision we make is motivated by either fear or love.”

Love in any form is risky. But when you love a pint-sized human being, you begin to realize just how vulnerable your heart is and how little control you have. You would step in the path of a raging mountain lion for this little person; you would take a bullet headed their way; you would jump into the rapids to save them . . . and yet there are approximately 79 ways they could die before breakfast. And that’s to say nothing of the ways they could rebel against you or reject everything you hold dear or otherwise break your heart.

To the pragmatic mind, love seems like a fool’s choice. Surely the risk is too great, especially when there’s no guarantee about the outcome. If our decision is based on fear, we’ll never put our hearts out there to get trampled. But if our decision is motivated by love, we will have the courage to make the scary, risky leap of love.

Mercifully, we have a God who didn’t just command us to love; he took the risk of love himself. Madeleine L’Engle captures this idea of love incarnate in her poem “The Risk of Birth.”

This is no time for a child to be born,
With the earth betrayed by war and hate
And a comet slashing the sky to warn
That time runs out and the sun burns late.
That was no time for a child to born,
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honour and truth were trampled by scorn—
Yet here did the Saviour make his home.
When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn—
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.
Madeleine L’Engle

Bringing love of any kind into the world is fraught with risk. Hurricanes strike. Bombs drop. Cars crash. Doctors bear bad news. The world shifts under our feet. When is the time for love to be born?

So I guess it comes down to this: Don’t wait for the conditions to be right. Take the risk of love. Take the risk of birth. If God himself became love incarnate when it was no time for a child to be born, then we, too, can love . . . even when the timing is all wrong.

birthday

It’s my 39^th birthday this week, which has prompted me to do some reflecting on my thirties. Whenever people in their twenties ask me about turning thirty, I tell them that the thirties are so much better than the twenties, and I mean it. Here are some of the things I’ve learned over the past almost-decade:

1. It’s not up to you to make people like you.

As a recovering people-pleaser, I’ve spent chunks of decades worrying what other people think of me. Not only is this exhausting, it also makes it hard to tell who likes you for who you really are. Here’s my advice to my fellow people pleasers out there: Aim for pleasing God and being authentic to who he made you to be, and let everything else fall as it may.

2. Wear clothes that make you feel good.

How did it take me until I was thirtysomething to realize that I find dress pants soul-sucking? Take it from someone who wishes she’d had a sartorial epiphany sooner: Find your style. Embrace it. Then jettison the clothes you don’t like.

3. Find a groove that works for you.

In your twenties, you can get by on haphazard sleep and a slapdash schedule. But in my thirties, I’ve found that I need to identify the things that recharge me and then make them a priority. For me that includes things like going to bed by ten, taking walks to the library, carving out time to write, and having regular coffee dates with friends; otherwise I get wonky fast. What are the things that recharge you? Set aside time for those things, and don’t apologize for making them sacred.

4. Get out of your rut.

Okay, I realize I just said “find a groove,” but the flip side is that it’s also important to try new things every once in a while. I’m a creature of habit, so this takes intentionality for me, but I’ve come to realize that some of my most meaningful experiences have come from times I did something out of my comfort zone.

5. Be grateful for the present.

For most of my twenties, I found myself always looking ahead to what was next, whether out of worry or anticipation. Almost as soon as one prayer request was answered, I’d be on to the next one. But how much life do we miss out on when we’re constantly fast-forwarding into the next phase? I hope in my thirties I’ve been able to savor more, to be grateful for the right-now.

6. Love is worth the risk.

Love feels scary sometimes, and I’m not going to promise that love will never hurt. As C. S. Lewis says, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.” But I will vouch for the fact that even though love means opening yourself up to pain, the pain is worth it. And sometimes the pain itself increases your capacity for love.

7. Dream big and fail big.

I’m an INFJ by Meyers-Briggs personality type, meaning I’m not a natural-born risk taker. I’d rather play it safe and think something through from every possible angle to make sure I don’t fail or make a mistake. But here’s the truth: sometimes you just have to jump. You have to go all in, not having all the facts, not knowing how it’s going to end. And sometimes you will fail. But you know what? It’s okay. That’s not the end of the story; it just makes for an interesting side plot.

8. Embrace the little people in your life.

One of the best things about my thirties has been being an aunt to seven amazing nieces and nephews. Kids remind you how to laugh, how to ask big questions, and how to wonder again. Whether or not you have children or small relatives of your own, I highly recommend that you find some little people to invest in. I can’t guarantee if the kids will benefit, but you will definitely be the richer for it.

9. Call your mom.

When we’re young, I think most of us have a certain sense of invincibility—not only about ourselves but about those we love. We have this unchecked idea that our people will always be there for us in the same way they are now. But as I get older, I am becoming more aware of mortality—my own and other people’s. So I want to seize the little moments with the people I love—the ordinary phone calls with my mom, the discussions about life and the news with my dad, the trips to the zoo with my nieces and nephews, the Sunday visits with my grandma, the weekly crossword puzzles with my sister.

10. God is bigger and smarter than I am.

I have come up with plenty of scripts for my life over the years—plans for what I’d do and when I’d do it and how it would all unfold along the way. But it turns out that God has much better ideas than I could come up with—and he knows me better than I know myself. It’s usually not until retrospect that I can trace what he was doing, but I’ve been through enough with him by now to know that he’s doing something good, whether I can see it yet or not.

Bonus: Say yes to ice cream.

I’m already at #10 on my list, but Daniel made me coffee ice cream for my birthday, which reminded me of one more thing I need to add: leave a little room in your life for the sweet things.

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How about you? What are you learning in this decade of your life?

The Risk of Love

10 Things I’ve Learned in My 30s