Unrequited Love and the Desperate Search for Holiness, part I

I'm gonna wager that if you have the mental capacity to read and understand the words on this page, then you've probably been in love before.

I mean, really, if you're past the age of seven, you've probably been in love before.

And... unfortunately... you've probably also been in love with someone who didn't love you back. Maybe they didn't love you back the right way, maybe they didn't love you back "enough", maybe they didn't love you back at all.

But I don't know anyone who hasn't been through it, and I can honestly say that unrequited love is the absolute worst thing I have ever experienced. There's no exaggeration in that, there's no hyperbole, and there's no melodrama. It's just a straight up fact.

I've never buried a parent, and, Lord willing, I won't have to for a long, long, long time. Again, Lord willing, I hope to never have to bury a child, once I've actually got them. I'm not saying unrequited love is the worst thing possible, I'm just saying it's the worst thing I've gone through.

How can someone so completely break my heart if there wasn't ever actually a relationship there in the first place? How can a love that didn't actually happen keep me up at night? How could I feel so strongly, so deeply, and so completely for someone else that I would - gladly, and without a moment's hesitation - sacrifice everything I am and have and ever would be for her and it not be returned?

I don't know. I don't get it. Maybe I will one day. Maybe I won't.

But in the meantime... I've learned something else about God.

God created us because He loves us. God created the entire universe because He loves us. Everything in the grand infinite span of existence was designed to point clearly towards God. The stars in the night sky, the majesty of nature, the love and reasoning of mankind... it's all there to point towards God.

I'm willing to lay down my entire life, to the point of death, for the girl that I love. God did lay down His life, to the point of death, for the people He loves. And those people is us. All of us. Every single one of us.

And so now... I have some small, tiny fraction of a window into the heart of God. Now I know, in a small, small, so very, very small way what God feels when someone doesn't love Him the way He wants us to.

And I never want to put God through that again.

You see, the thing is, God really only asks us to do one thing: Love Him. That's it. That is the entire point.

Matthew 22:36-40

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

Everything in the Bible - everything, everything, everything - is meant to show us one thing: how to better love God. It just happens that loving God means you love people.

Love changes your life. And I don't mean it changes your life like a new haircut "changes your life" or getting a new car "changes your life" or even like moving to a new town "changes your life." Love rewires you. Love transforms you. Love completely overhauls everything you are.

I John 4:7-12

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

There comes a time in life - and I don't know when that time is for you, I just know it's right now for me - when love becomes the single most important thing in the universe. And the thing is... it transcends reciprocation.

Do I hope and wish and pray that the girl I'm so hung up on will change her mind and things work out between the two of us and we live happily ever after? You bet. More than anything else in the physical world, that's at the top of my list. It'd sure make one peach of a Christmas present.

But is my love for her conditionally based on her loving me back? No. Not anymore, at least. Whether we get married or not, whether I ever speak to her again or not, I know that I care for her on a deep enough level that I can't go back on it. I can't undo it. And it's not just because it's her.

It's because it's love.

I finally understood - even if it was just for a brief, shimmering moment - what it means to be willing to lay down my life for someone. I finally understood - even as imperfect it was and still is - what it's like to put someone else completely above myself. I finally understood - even as much as coming to the understanding hurt me - what it means to love and accept and forgive and care for and sacrifice for and pray for another person to the point that I put their needs and desires above my own.

And now... I'm realizing I've got to do that for everybody on the planet.

I've got a great relationship with both of my parents. My sister is one of my closest friends. I've been richly blessed my entire life with such an incredible family, so it's not like I'm any stranger to love.

But so what if I love my family? So what if I love the people who love me? Who cares? Who's impressed?

But what if I start loving the people who don't love me back?

What if I start loving everyone with just as much of the love as I've had for the unattainable girl of my dreams, even if it's not in the same way?

What if I start loving everyone I ever come in contact with like they're more important than I am?

Wouldn't that be something? Wouldn't that be approaching true holiness? Wouldn't that be getting as close as is humanly possible to really showing the world what the power and love of God can still do today?

John said that "God is love." He also said that "love comes from God" and that "everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God." And when I finally got to the point where I understood what that kind of love is, it changed my life. I'm telling you right now, it was a BIG moment when I realized that my heart and soul were bursting apart at the seams because I had finally let God show me what HIS love is like.

So what if you started doing the same thing?