My friend, Jenna Kimble, wrote a song, and one particular line caught my attention: "And each time I give away my heart, there's room for more love, whether to give or receive...room for more love."
It's amazing! You would think that you would have less capacity to love after giving away pieces of your heart...but somehow my ability to love is always replenished. Giving love away doesn't diminish it. Somehow it's always filled back up.
I have found this to be true in a variety of situations. For example, on my mission I never stayed any place very long: 6 weeks to 3 months tops. So I routinely gave my heart away to people, and then had to leave them. It was painful! But whenever I went to a new place, I was able to love them just as well. The old people still held a piece of my heart, but I still had a full heart to give to the new people. And since I've come back, I've been amazed at my ability to love people here, even though I felt that I'd left my heart in Brasil. Now I feel like I left half my heart in Jerusalem and half my heart in Brasil; yet I still have a full heart to give to my 28 students!
Somehow I've picked up the ideal that choosing to love is never a bad choice. I don't know if someone taught me that or if it was from a catchy quote, or what...but somehow it entered into my ideology. Choosing to love is never wrong. And in my stage of life, living by this adage can be painful! Sometimes I give my heart to someone and then they decide they don't want it, and it takes a while for me to regain ownership of my own heart. But when I do, I always find that there is room for more love: more love to give and more to receive. And I'm always better for it. Even though it hurts, I've never regretted loving somebody.
I wonder if this is part of our divine heritage. I was listening to President Uchtdorf's talk on love this morning on my way to work, and he was talking about how we inherited the ability to love from our Father, who is all-loving. I think this is part of the miracle of love: that no matter how much of it we give away, the supply is always replenished. There's room for more love.
p.s. Jenna's song is amazing, and it is available on i-tunes. It's called "Bring on the Rain."
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