Love in all it’s absence

🕊 I know there may be some out there with these feelings, so I wanted to put this post out there today for those of you who need it!

This time of year, when I expect to be close to him, to God, in celebration of Christ’s birth. I often don’t. 🤦🏼‍♀️

In days gone by this was often a source of great spiritual loneliness for me, of emptiness. Why when I focused so much on him did he not feel like he was there? How can a God who is ever loving always there feel so absent? How is that fair?

Then one day it hit me. When thinking about love, about marriage and all the in between - as beings made in Gods image we were created in love, not for the feeling or emotion of love, but the very act of love itself.

When we look at our very human relationships, that act of love isn’t in always in the ‘feeling’ it’s in loving when loving can feel hard, when we don’t necessarily feel close to or with someone. It’s choosing to love someone and give love despite how loving that person makes you feel.

“Love is sometimes filled with affection. This “affect” of love is, of course, a welcome gift whenever it is given. But true love needs to be more than affection, it is meant to be effective. This means that love is meant to “move.” It is meant to be a choice. It is more than a feeling (thank you, Boston), and reaches a certain degree of perfection when we choose to love in the absence of the positive feelings we get…. true love becomes an even greater gift when we love the other for their own sake, not for anything we get from loving them “ Fr Michael Schmitz

Our relationship with the Lord is no different.

God is ever present and ever loving, and when we feel his love that is amazing! When we feel close to him it is the most wonderful feeling we can have, when God sits back and allows that distance, it’s allowing us to really step into that act of love, and to love him for the true act of selfless love, to love him for who he is and not alone on what joy he gives.

Love, something so human, so real and tangible is something which is also divine, and in realising this simple fact of love, those absences no longer feel like a spiritual black hole for me, they feel fruitful.