"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. The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of and perturbations of love is Hell. We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as this the way in which they should break so be it." C.S. Lewis

My Bishop shared this quote with me a couple of weeks ago, and it has become one of my favorites...just wanted to share it.