Love Hurts

As the story goes, St. Teresa of Avila once fell off her donkey while traveling. She landed in mud and dirtied her habit. In flash of anger and wit – she said to God,  “If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you don’t have many.”  #truestory #relatable

When people ask me about how God and I love each other… I’m a little hesitant to share… because it’s not the stuff of rom-coms, it doesn’t fit into one neat little Valentine’s Day Card. It’s less of Joseph or Mary and more of Job and Jonah. Raw and Fierce, Visceral and Honest. Mostly, powerful. so, so powerful.

Instead of that one ‘wrecking ball’ moment, my life is peppered with big little things that God has done over the years, to show me he loves me… and sometimes, that love has been too much of a cross for me to bear.

In 2018, I remember sitting outside the I.C.U where my mother was admitted. She had had Renal Cell Carcinoma with Brain metastases (cancer) and after a few months of promising recovery, she had a seizure, and was back in there.

As I sat outside, alone ( I couldn’t really call anyone because it was a weekday and honestly there wasn’t any ’emergency’, just me, feeling low. Unloved.) I was wondering what to cry about… Amidst the overwhelming storm of my mother’s illness, I was also nursing (almost shamefully) a very broken heart, rejection, loneliness, exhaustion both mental and physical, financial burdens… etc. etc.

The list seemed endless, and my cross heavier.

At that moment I felt God’s love envelop me, not in a comforting presence, soothing my tears, but in a moment of raw pain, abandonment and misery…  In my mind’s eye, I saw Jesus sobbing in the Garden of Gethsemane, like me, shrouded in darkness and loneliness, fighting despair and rejection.

“You love me, don’t you?”  He seemed to say, so, so sweetly… “Won’t you carry a bit of my cross with me?”

Luckily I was alone. Because I sobbed. It was an overflow of love… but not the kind you hear in the stories…. It was a tidal wave that crashed through my little heart, breaking it open and stretching it to the point of pain. Fulton Sheen describes it beautifully…

“Broken things are precious. We eat broken bread because we share in the depth of our Lord and His broken life. Broken flowers give perfume. Broken incense is used in adoration. A broken ship saved Paul and many other passengers on their way to Rome. Sometimes the only way the good Lord can get into some hearts is to break them.”

God’s love for me is not a feeling or an emotion. It’s a challenge to access the parts in me I don’t want to disturb. It’s uncomfortably honest. Unrelenting. Personal.

It’s in the tears that roll down my hot face or the rapture in my heart when I see a beautiful sunset or a beautiful person. ‘God is an artist’ Mom used to say. I wholeheartedly agree.

I remember once,  asking Him (ranting) if He would leave the 99 sheep for me (or some such petulant thing), and He seemed to question the conditionality of my love – If He was the provider, and I was the provided for, of course, I would love him (duh).. and he would be faithful, he would always be faithful (also, duh)… but then He  said something that really really struck me…

“Will you still love me, if I don’t answer the cries of your heart? If I have nothing to give you… will you still love me?”

Would I?

That again isn’t something  you see on a Valentine’s Day card. But it it is what it is, the pain-filled tsunami, that reckless love of God.