Something There is That Doesn't Love a Wall

This week has been crazy! First thing Monday morning, I drove across town to the Courthouse where the judge signed my final divorce decree ending 8 years, 10 months, and 3 weeks of a nightmare of a marriage. I've felt every human emotion in the days that have followed. As is my custom, I confide the most personal, emotionally vulnerable things of my heart to my friend, Bruce. I am so glad he's not a writer because he would have novels to fill with the things he has learned about me over the past 16 months. He mentioned something interesting....the idea that he, like me, had been putting up walls in his life. Immediately, I thought of the Robert Frost poem, "Mending Walls." Something about me doesn't love a wall. I don't want to keep people out, and I certainly have learned the danger of trying to keep people in, so what good is a wall when you are neither invested in keeping people in nor in keeping people out?
I think the natural thing is to want to retreat to this place where I am anti-relationship, anti-marriage, and anti-woman, but, as someone pointed out to me this week, that is not who I am by very nature. I love relationships, hence my chosen profession. I believe in marriage, hence my chosen profession. I love women. I mean, have you met my mom? How could I ever hate women when I've had my mom around my entire life? So, I have been trying to live without walls and love without boundaries, but it's hard when you understand that relationships only work when both people are completely committed. I think my only real fear about relationships is that even if we give our all and put forth all of our energy to make it work, if the other person doesn't, it will not work. Ironically, this is the beauty of the nature of relationships: one emotionally healthy person making an informed decision to share life's journey either in whole or in part with another emotionally healthy person. When we try to keep people out, we only rob ourselves of the gift of being truly loved.
I guess you can say that was my ex-wife's parting gift to me. Somehow, she taught me that, and I am thankful for the lesson. How much wiser we would be if we, like Frost, insisted, when told that "good fences make good neighbors", that "before I built a wall I’d ask to know what I was walling in or walling out and to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, that wants it down." Maybe this is weird coming from a divorcee like me, but I challenge you not to build a wall around your heart. Even if you've been hurt before and feel that you can't trust again, you cannot give up on love. You cannot wall out the most sublime of all human emotions. You can't wall in the feeling of safety and security is that only found in the loving arms of another. To whom might you give offence? You might give offence to God who is the Author of love, the Creator of the very thing within us that causes us to gravitate towards another. Do I believe in love? Do I believe in healthy relationships? Do I believe in eternal marriage? The answer is a resounding yes! Indeed, something there is that simply doesn't love a wall, and that part of me wants it down.