This graphic is an accurate depiction of what falling in love feels like. Warning: Prolonged use of emojis to articulate emotions can result in side effects including, but not limited to: incapacity or significant disruption of the ability to conduct daily basic functions such as speaking (out loud) and sleeping, restlessness, and grogginess.

It has been a long time since I have been in love. The intertwining of hearts, of hopes, and dreams of the future. The daily check-ins with mundane facts about breakfast or an annoying interaction at work. The ability to say everything without saying anything at all. The openheartedness to who a person is and will become.

See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland (Isaiah 43:19)

In navigating love again, I find myself feeling and experiencing so many new emotions. The first love (or last love) is everything, until it’s not. If we are so lucky (and I hope we all inevitably are), we get to try this thing called love again.

This time around, I know who I am more than ever before- I am sensitive, resilient, passionate, all-in, free-spirited, idealistic, loving, reserved, and open. I have come to cherish the crevices of my heart and not demand from myself more than I can give. I can’t be everything for everyone. What I have in my hands and heart to offer is enough. Because of this, the journey of falling in love again is lighthearted, unforced, and enjoyable.

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.

The one who fears is not made perfect in love (1 John 4:18)

At the same time, everything feels different after your first love. And the process of finding love again has been a series of explosions of my brain because of how much I am learning- the idiosyncrasies and depths of someone new, the marks that people and circumstances have left behind, and new ways to share secrets and my heart.

Falling in love feels like learning a new language, and there’s so much I want to say. It is both exhilarating and disorienting. But in the discomfort and unfamiliar territory, I refuse to let go of what I know. He is surely doing a new thing and I am already loved perfectly. Thank you God for the new things.