When she was a child, love meant safety. It was her mother’s hand guiding hers, the smell of broth simmering on the stove, the steady hum of a home that held her together. She loved because she was cared for, because the world returned what she offered.
Then the accident came. Her mother’s body survived, but her mind wandered somewhere unreachable. The daughter learned how to lift her, how to feed her, how to smile when exhaustion burned behind her eyes. That was the first time love broke. It shattered along the line where reason had once held it together—love for care turned into love despite cost.
She loved again, later, in friendship. It was an easy, laughing thing until a rumor cracked it open. When fear pressed down, her friend’s loyalty folded, and a lie was told. It wasn’t the lie that hurt—it was seeing how quickly love could be traded for safety. The second fracture came sharper. Yet she forgave, and in forgiving, she learned to love a little better—to see frailty without resentment.
Then there was a man who said she was his one and only. She believed him, and for a time it was true. When the betrayal came, it didn’t arrive as a confession but as a scent—someone else’s perfume on his shirt. Love broke again, harder. But she found, after the bitterness ebbed, that her heart hadn’t died. It had simply become quieter. She could still wish him peace, and that surprised her.
When her children were born, she thought she had finally reached the pure form of love. It was not built on need, nor on promise. It was existence itself. Then her daughter’s body failed her, and there was nothing left to save. The loss tore through every layer of meaning she had built. For a long time she lived hollowed out, certain that love was only a trap that kept finding new ways to break her.
But time, persistent as tide, carried her forward. The grief dulled into something almost gentle. She began to see that each collapse had reshaped her—less dependent, more patient.
One late afternoon, long after she had stopped expecting much from life, she found a small bird caught in a snare near her fence. Its wings trembled against her hands as she freed it. It paused, looked at her with the quick, fierce eye of something wild, then flew away.
The next morning, it returned—only for a moment, perching at her window before vanishing again. She smiled. It owed her nothing, yet her heart filled as though it had been waiting for this small, unpromised grace.
Looking up at the empty sky, she understood. Every time love had shattered, it had broken her open wider, until even this—this fleeting, reasonless tenderness—could fill her completely.
We spend our lives searching for reasons to love, reasons that would stay, she thought. But maybe there is no such thing. We do not love because of anything that happens in life.
Instead, things happen in life to help us learn how to love better, to love more like how God loves us. And maybe one day, if she kept learning, she would reach the point where love no longer needed a reason at all.
And then, all her sufferings and pains would be all worthwhile.
And then, her soul may fully be at peace and at joy.