“Love is easy to feel, difficult to hold, and astoundingly painful to hand over to someone else.” I spoke those words to a friend not too long ago, and (not to be prideful) I thought they were quite beautiful so I wrote them down. I’ve spoken at length about love on this blog over the past year, and this is likely because, as anyone who has experienced it would know, it is possibly the most incredible feeling one could expect on this side of Heaven. For this reason, the poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, says that love is “the work for which all other work is but preparation,” and I’ve spoken about how it is bloody hard work, how it defies description, and how it can become warped. I’ve said many things, but the other day I came upon a phrase that could not help but remind me of what love is: it is out of control.

I’m quite fond of the phrase “my heart in your hands”. It wonderfully captures the vulnerability that comes with being in love. When your heart is given to someone else, you place an incredible amount of trust in that person. Once given, they can do what they like. They can cherish it, protect it, reject it, crush it, throw it away, squander it, or—the best of all—give you their heart in return. It is both quite beautiful and very, very scary because in that moment, you are very much out of control. It is no longer yours alone, after all. If you’d like a film analogy to explain, consider how, in Pirates of the Caribbean, Davy Jones cuts out his heart, and it is toyed around by the other characters for a good two movies. He gave it away in love, but the end result was that his heart was eventually stabbed, and he passed on. Of course, no one literally cuts out their heart as such. However, in a metaphorical way, our hearts are similarly vulnerable when they are given away.

What is one to do in such a state? There’s nothing they can do, really. What’s done is done. The real fight in such situations is to sit still, and accept that it is no longer you in control. Your control came and went in giving it away, but now that is surrendered to the other person, and for God, to do with as they will, and this is tricky situation to navigate. All that can be done is accept that it is not up to you any longer, and consider that it is for the best.

Of course, this is easier said than done! What isn’t? While I speak of love in this way, the same is true for many things in our lives. Not every card that we’re dealt is the card we were hoping for. I’d hoped for a flush, but got a two pair. Maybe you only needed a two pair, but only received one. But this is not always so. Sometimes you expect a pair, but do better than you thought. Life is the same: it’s not a gamble, but there are a great deal of circumstances that are beyond one’s control, and so it’s easy to become despondent. In those moments, I remember something an old mentor once said to me: “Remember who God is.” That same God who responses to prayers and petitions may be likened to a box of IKEA furniture that arrives on an unexpected date and without instructions still works for good. That is to say, when you’re out of control, the best you can do is admit your dependency, try to trust who He is, and hope for the best because, as it turns out, there may be more reason to hope than you think. Love and life are always a leap of faith.