Lemonade Love

Lemons alone are sour to the taste and leave a bitterness on your tongue. But when you add sugar and water they are transformed into something sweet and delicious leaving you craving more lemonade. Life can be like lemons. Our heart gets hurt and it becomes sour and bitter. It may be a natural response to the emotional trauma of heartbreak, but it doesn’t have to take over your life. The bitterness can leave scars and sour tastes in the hearts of those a hurt person encounters.

I love spreading love to others. I have said this time and time again. But what happens when you encounter a person whom your heart doesn’t jump to love? You don’t do anything to them but you just stand indifferently towards them. Past hurts can linger in the shadows of one’s heart and suddenly appear out of nowhere. I had such an experience.

I thought I was over that part of my life. Had dealt with all the leftover emotions and pain. Until he came back. Then they all came flooding back. The pain, the distrust, and the anxiety. I had slowly become sour because two recent relationships ended with empty promises from men who did not seem to know my worth as a woman. Perhaps because prior to a decade ago I didn’t even know my own worth.

I loved people who could not love me back in one way or another. It left holes in me. Holes I did not know were still open. Holes that began to be filled with hard bitter substances that prevented me from being able to move forward and open myself fully to another man. I had built up these defenses to keep a man from penetrating my heart, by hiding mine. Keeping them at a distance, not allowing them to get too close.

Only this doesn’t work when they can see beyond the mask you present. When they can see what you are hiding and call it forth. You are not able to hide under these circumstances. But I needed some ingredients in my life to offset the bitter pill I had swallowed. This sweet nectar of love seeped into my life and opened my heart. I am loving again and feeling things I had resisted before. Feelings of commitment, loyalty and submission. Things I said I would never do again for fear of repeating my past.

But I am doing them and doing them unconsciously. This nectar has created a new hunger in my heart for love, closeness, and true intimacy. It has allowed my heart to create sweet, sweet lemonade from the remnants of the sour left in my heart. It has given me hope that love can be trusted again. Allowing a man to love me and care for me can be done again.

But doing so requires that I dig out that nasty lemon that has rotted in my heart and replace it with the sweet nectar of love. Instead of giving out the old rotten heart to those who may have hurt me in the past, give out love instead. Yeah I know this is a lesson that I should know already but sometimes there are hidden things in your heart that you are not aware of. They can slip up and choke out new opportunities if you don’t recognize it and kill the root.

So that is what I am doing. I am facing this head on and making a conscious decision to love. To move forward leaving the past hurt in the past. Doing so will help me to leap forward into the promise of new opportunities and prosperity. Love is even powerful enough to subdue enemies and charm the hardest heart. We have to believe that or there will be no hope and when there is no hope faith cannot work.