Christian author C. S. Lewis fell in love late in life. Not long after his marriage to Joy Gresham, Joy contracted cancer. Lewis and Joy only shared a few short years together before she passed away. When C. S. Lewis speaks of the pain of love, we know he is speaking from experience. Here is what Lewis writes about the risks of love:
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your
heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want
to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no
one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully around with
hobbies and little luxuries … lock it up safe in the casket or
coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark,
motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it
will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable … The only
place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the
dangers of love is hell!”
______________
“Loving Brings Pain” by Jan Silvious, PULPIT HELPS, Feb. 2002, p. 10.