Trouble comes in many forms: misunderstandings, lack of communication, different values, different ways of doing things. We live love by understanding that in so many things, there's no right way, only your way and my way, and let's respect each other's way and come to compromise. Deep understanding is recognizing that each person's choices reflect a perhaps hidden story from his or her life that needs you to pay attention, listen, absorb, and accept. Deep love uncovers hidden wounds, and speaks the truth in love so healing can begin.
Loving until it hurts means discovering that the other isn't the perfect paragon you wanted him or her to be. And discovering and admitting you aren't the perfect paragon that the other wanted. Loving until it hurts means having the humility to accept your fall from grace and the grace to cushion his or her's equally humbling fall.
Loving until it hurts means hanging in for the long haul, even though both of you will say things out of pain that cause pain. Both of you will have to learn how to forgive and forget. Both of you will learn the reality of each other's identity, an identity that should never be compromised. Both of you will learn how to accept each other's particular quirks and failings that will never change. If you can both live in this manner, the relationship becomes a deeply beautiful choreography of moving gracefully together through life in deepening peace and love. The pain is transmuted into pure, life-giving joy.
Loving until it hurts means going beyond our walls of safety to embrace the Other. Pope Francis this week visited a Buddhist Temple in Sri Lanka, and spoke to Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and other religious leaders about the necessity of interreligious dialogue. This dialogue involves, according to Francis, each person explaining clearly the beliefs of his or her faith-identity that cannot be compromised, and then approaching others with deep respect and a desire for friendship and working together - real unity in spite of real differences.
Like a good marriage, this dialogue will require the hard work of careful communication, inevitable misunderstandings, forgiveness, respect for the other. Leaders from these different traditions will have to accept each religious traditions' history of being attacked and vilified - and offer humble apologies for the pain inflicted in the past to help heal these wounds. This global loving until it hurts can lead to honest, fruitful interfaith relationships that can help unify the world.
Loving respect for another person, loving respect for another's faith, building lasting fruitful relationships - all this is doing God's work. Jesus prayed for us to do this, to live this way, at his Last Supper when He said "This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." John 15: 12-13.)
Loving until it hurts means laying down one's life: putting aside selfishness, ego, even legitimate self-interest, so the other can live at a deeper level. So there can be new transcendent, unifying life between you. Jesus laid down His life for us on the cross in the final radical act that shows us unequivocally that God is willing to love us until it hurts. In our relationships, can we do less? Either we're all in - or it's all over.