Good Love is Worth Staying For

 

It is so hard for me to look at him 

without seeing someone

looking for a way out.

Without seeing everyone who has ever left before.

I look at him and find an escape route

& this time I am the only one running towards it.

& this time the only thing I am running from

is the chance to let him leave me first


& this is how my love is like religion.

This is how my love is learning to fear being sought after 

by something so much greater than myself

by something so big I cannot see it wanting to stay

learning to fear being desired with the belief that one day,

I will have learned to love so hard that he turns back into dust in my arms,

turns back into my rib

leaves me breathless & missing

& this is how I learned to love.

Like finding this person will be my salvation so do not ever let go

& this is how my love is like exodus.

It is both exile and refuge

it is broken vessel and light spilling out, 

it is spilling over 

holy & sinful & pretty


& this is what his worship sounds like.

He thanks me for everything I have ever done 

that has made him believe in a Good Love,

for all my signs and wonders.

tells me

that he isn’t going anywhere.

asks if I believe that.

I can’t say yes,

only that I am working on it 

& it’s true.

I am working on breaking open without running from the wreckage.

I am working on this belief that I am worth cleaning up the pieces for.

I am working on belief in this thing that I cannot see 

& this is how my love is like a prayer.

This is how my love is learning how to be loved back.

Sometimes

this prayer feels like homecoming

& others

like not texting back on purpose,

hoping someone else feels this kind of absence.

Sometimes I forget the words to this worship

even though I often feel I should know it by heart

even though it’s okay to need a reminder 

that I do not have to be stainless to be made in the image of Heaven.

& when I do forget,

I scream into the Abyss about all the ways in which I’m sad

& the Abyss screams back,

sends me a hiking trail lined with wildflowers

sends me the sun after four months of cold & darkness

sends me friends who haven’t left me either 

and tells me this is love too.

Tells me this is what I was made for.

That I am worth receiving every bit of love I have ever given

right back & more 

& now I am starting to believe it.

I am starting to break open.

It feels like being both forgiving & forgiven

looks like heaven

sounds like answered prayer.

It is learning to let him love me right back 

& finding all the Good Love 

worth staying for.