Tell Your Broken Heart that Love Is Infinite

You think you’ll never love again? You’re wrong

My mistake, because a mistake is what it feels like now, was taking all this love I had to give and primarily focusing it on one person. Of course, I had love for my children — always have and always will. I had love to give to my family and friends. I gave my love generously, but for a little while, I directed that fierce need to love onto one person.

I used all the love languages. If he wanted my time, he had it. My words? I had plenty of them. My touch, thoughtful gifts, acts of service? I gave it all.

That doesn’t sound like a mistake. It sounds loving and intentional. But no matter how much I gave, no matter how hard I tried, the one thing I couldn’t do was secure any love in return. I had love to give, and I was giving it. But I also needed love, and I was managing a deficit.

I will never regret giving love, but I look back and see how I sunk so much of it into this one human soul. I just heaped on love, and I can imagine how, for a certain person, this could be overwhelming. I had good intentions but a skewed perspective.

For a long time, I was sure that I would never love like that again.

In some ways, I know I was right. It will never be exactly the same. But in the most profound and important ways, I was wrong. Love is not a finite commodity. Love is infinite and, dare I say, eternal. It’s a renewable resource constantly renewing.

My broken heart said that this was it. I gave all I had. I had nothing left. But my heart was simply tired. It had given too much. It was depleted. It needed time to rest and heal. Most importantly, it needed time to soak in some love and be replenished.

I spent time with my family. I surrounded myself with friends, growing my circle larger and stronger. I added a dog to our family, and then I decided we needed cats, too. And chickens. I didn’t see them as responsibilities. I saw them as more living creatures to love.

But I didn’t just vomit my love, if you’ll excuse the crassness of it, onto every living creature in my path. I also directed it into nurturing plants and caring for my home. I gave love to myself, too — heaping it on in ways I never had before. My heart, badly broken, began to heal. Slowly, it began to bloom.

Humans are often hampered by self-limitations.

We tell ourselves what we can and cannot do. Sometimes, we make our decrees without ever truly trying. We make our worlds small — and suffer for it.

For a long time, my world was intentionally small. I curled around the hurt and kept it to myself. My tears were not for public consumption. My pain was not something I wanted people to feel. I wanted to be an island, to scream my grief out into the vast ocean and let the tide take it. It took a while to see that I needed other people. I needed those connections of love and support.

We don’t need to make our worlds small. We don’t need to set limitations on ourselves and decree what we can and cannot do. It does no good to restrict love or to try to make it fit into a smaller box.

Just because I loved one man who did not love me does not mean that I will not love another or that I will never be loved in return. That was fear hissing into my ears and wrapping around my heart. It wasn’t true. It sure as hell wasn’t love.

Love is infinite and infinitely renewable.

We can’t give all our love away because it just keeps refilling itself. There is always more. Just when we think it’s gone, it begins to fill again. We begin to feel again. We give up on love, but it never ever gives up on us. We turn it away sometimes, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there and readily available should we ever get brave enough to let it in.

My love was overflowing when I met him. I just had so much of it, and I hadn’t had enough places to put it. So, I gave him what I had. Was it too much? Only he can say. But I had it, and I gave it, and I cannot find it in me to regret it. My only regret is that I didn’t spread it further — that I didn’t build a stronger support of people who would love me back.

These days, my love is overflowing, but it’s not because I haven’t found enough containers for it. I’ve found that it exceeds containment. With every breath I take and every moment of gratitude I feel, it grows. I give generously to my children, my family, and my friends. My pets know every moment that they are cherished. My plants reach toward the sun and know that they are loved. My world feels vast because love is infinite, and I stopped trying to contain it.

I couldn’t contain it even if I tried.