The author sent us this excerpt from her personal journal. She is a wife and mother from the eastern United States.
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Am I still trying to get God to notice me? “See me, like me, approve of me!” Am I still trying to earn his love? But God loves me totally, right now. And he always has.
He loves me because of who he is, not because of who I am or what I am or am not doing. That should be good news to me. But, somehow, it seems sort of impersonal. Where do I come into things?
Mature, earthly love does not work like that. The only earthly love I’ve met that even faintly resembles God’s unconditional, total love is that of a small child or a family pet. They don’t care if I am worthy of their devotion or if I am working to earn it. They just want to be with me, to be noticed and responded to by me. It is humbling to beloved like that.
I know instinctively that once we are grown and infected with the expectations of others, we no longer remember how to love unconditionally. We have imposed terms on others: “Yes, I will love you, if you act in this way … if you think I’m Ms. Perfect … if you look like Paul Newman, etc.”
Of course, we also realize that others can impose “love terms” on us just as well. Mature, earthly love has become a commodity to be earned. And what is earned can just as easily be lost! You don’t act right, or you get fat, and “Bye, bye, love! “That’s personal, all right!
Why would I want God’s love to be like that? It is a horrible sort of love, but at least it’s not humbling.
Oh, the root of my problem is showing: pride. If I can earn love, I have something to be proud of: “See how wonderful I am, how good, and pretty, and successful. Of course, you love me. How could you not? I am worthy of all your love.”
The love that just loves, without requiring me to be good or pretty or successful, humbles me to the ground. I gasp and pant before its power to cause me to see that it— this Love — is more important, better, prettier than I am. It causes me to lose my sense of self in my admiration for it.
That kind of love is so attractive that all my being responds to it, and goes out to it.
Why do we respond so extravagantly to babies and puppies? They draw us out of ourselves and fix our attention on them, on their grasping, tiny fingers or their warm, pink, licking tongues.
It has been shown that people who have pets, or who are able to interact with pets occasionally, are more relaxed and less stressed. They are taken out of themselves and their problems for a bit.
If this unconditional love of God’s (of which puppy and baby love is but a pale shadow) is so overwhelmingly wonderful, why do I still back off from it? Why do I see it as a threat of some sort? As impersonal? As being good for God, but not good for me?
Perhaps I don’t want to betaken out of myself and my problems for any extended length of time. My awareness of self and my problems are all I own. Perhaps I don’t want to be humbled to the ground by that love’s warm beauty, which also shows up my lack of same.
Perhaps I don’t want to admit that God has (is) something that I don’t have (am not).
If I do surrender to this love, what will become of me? I will get lost in it… and “own” myself no more. And then, what will I have left to buy love with?
But, if that love is already mine….
From Restoration 1995
