Love Hard and Hold Loosely

**Before you begin reading, sit down, breathe normally and be quiet for 1 minute.**

    One of life’s tensions seems to be that to truly live we have to love hard. We get many opportunities to love hard. We are part of families, we are married, we have children. We are part of communities, neighborhoods, friendships. We have so many opportunities to jump in and love hard.   
    With the opportunities to love hard, comes the truth that those things might go away, we might lose a community because of a move, we might lose a friendship due to pain, we might lose a loved one due to a tragic event. With the reality of loss sometimes we withhold from loving hard, we withhold because we do not want to hurt again, at least not hurt very deeply.
    It seems that when we love hard we also have to hold loosely. I do not do this very well. I do not know that I know how. Loving people hard but knowing they are not “mine” is a tension. People are entrusted to me, my family, my friends, but ultimately they are all God’s. I jump into a community and I am entrusted to love and care for people as I live sacrificially but they could move at a moment’s notice or I could move. This community is also God’s.
    There is such a struggle to love hard and to hold loosely. How do we love hard yet hold loosely? Still trying to figure this one out and I have a feeling it requires a little more trust from God. (The trust thing comes up a lot for me). I have a feeling it also requires a little more belief that He also loves those things that I love and actually loves them more than I do.
    How do you love hard and hold loosely?
**Sit quietly again for as much time as is available to you.**