What We Keep

by Jennifer Millikin

There are all kinds of love in this world, but never the same love twice. - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“I guess there cannot be light without darkness.”

“Every day we are alive, we are experiencing. The joy, the struggle, the strife. We take little bits of those experiences, and we walk on into the next day. We can’t control what happens around us, or what other people do, but we make choices. We choose the hurts we cling to, the truths and lies we allow to mold us and shape us. You can allow the shame you feel about your mistakes to weigh you down and keep you from growing, or you can pick out what lessons you want to learn from them, and keep those instead. It’s your choice.”

Everyone, at one point or another, hurts the person they love the most. How can we not? Real love demands we strip ourselves, and bare our souls. It is a vulnerable, messy affair, and nobody escapes unscathed. I think the point, at the end of the day, is to decide whether you can forgive Gabriel’s mistakes, and move forward. If the promise of the future is enough to make you forgive the past, then do it.”

This, right here, is what life’s all about. Loving beyond measure. Growing and listening and adapting. Together.

We are intentional. Careful. Considerate. Hard-won love is sweeter.