Love Is Worth the Risk

people make life rich

Feb 06, 2023

One time I was at my grandparents’ house, surrounded by my little kids and feeling a bit overwhelmed as usual, and my grandfather looked me in the eyes and said, “Hope, you are a very rich woman. Do you know that?”

That really stuck with me, and I own it now. No matter what’s in my bank account, I am very rich. People make life rich.

The thing is…people also make life hard. (And complicated, as we discussed a couple weeks ago.)

On the days when parenting and difficult relationships feel more draining than they’re worth, we need to remember how rich we are to have them.

This month’s theme is Generosity and Resourcefulness, and we’ll be talking a lot about money. If opening ourselves up to relationships is an investment, it’s a risky one.

Bad things could happen to the ones we love! Bad things can happen to us because of those of we love. Heartbreak isn’t just for teenagers going through breakups; all of us have our hearts bruised and broken to pieces at some (or many) points in our lives…and we break others’ hearts, too. Closing ourselves off to others seems like the safest option.

When my husband and I were dating and a little nervous to commit, we would remind each other of “Page 121.” That was the spot in our personal copies of The Four Loves where C.S. Lewis wrote this:

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

Though the demands on our lives and the fears and pains we have to bear are burdensome, we become better people when we love, don’t we?

An entrepreneur is, by definition, a person who takes risks in their quest to create wealth. Think about the people (and children) you’ve opened yourself to; you have taken risks in order to live a rich life.

You can’t put a dollar sign value on something like a hug first thing in the morning or hand-holding on an afternoon walk or having a transparent late-night conversation. To know and be known…what purchasable thing could be better than that?

You might be driving a minivan instead of a Maserati, but right now, in this very moment, you have people in your life who are worth more than billions.

Help them feel like they’re worth more than billions this week.