May Human Love Point You to God's Healing Love

I recently went on a few dates with a nice young man, and we’ve gotten to the point where the conversations are a little deeper. We’ve actually been acquainted for three years, so inevitably the harder questions have come earlier than one might expect. The truer selves have begun to emerge. 

Well on one of those dates, he thought it would be great to go ice skating -- which I haven’t done since I was 15. It was mostly fine, but I fell on the ice a few times, only to find his hand reaching down to pull me up every time. Oddly enough on a previous date, I was coughing constantly, and he patted my back in a caring way, and made sure I was OK.

And when asked the hard questions on a recent dinner date, I found myself having to reveal parts of myself that left me in a vulnerable spot, like having a disease and infertility, and wondering if he would walk the opposite way after the night was over like many others have. At the end, I even lamented being as truthful as I was. No man dreams of a chronically ill partner who can’t give them children. 

He walked me to my car that night and surprised me with reassuring words, a loving hug, and innocent kiss. Joy welled up inside of me. It had probably been 3 years since I felt human love like that.

But beyond that, it felt different than I had previously experienced with others because it came from a place of knowing some of my biggest vulnerabilities and accepting them enough to come closer. It came from a place of compassion.

I don’t know if that relationship will end up anywhere, but I do know that I experienced Christ’s love and mercy through this guy. I experienced a human act of love in spite of what I lacked and what I considered to be immense flaws in myself that no one would ever want; and also perhaps metaphorically, in spite of my falls to the ground.

Spiritually, something fruitful emerged after I reflected on the experience. I realized that if a human being could accept and show love in spite of those, how much more was God’s acceptance and love for me in my flaws, weaknesses and afflictions? That same day, I saw this in my reading:

“We need to be looked upon by someone who says, as God did through the prophet Isaiah: ‘You are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you.’ Consider a very common experience: a girl who believes she is plain begins to think that she might not be so after all on the day a young man falls in love with her and looks at her with the tender eyes of someone in love. We urgently need the mediation of another’s eyes to love ourselves and accept ourselves. The eyes may be those of a parent, a friend, a spiritual director; but above all they are those of God our Father. The look in his eyes is the purest, truest, tenderest, most loving, and most hope-filled in this world. The greatest gift given those who seek God’s face by persevering in prayer may be that one day they will perceive something of this divine look upon themselves; they will feel themselves loved so tenderly that they will receive the grace of accepting themselves in depth.” -- Jacques Philippe, “Interior Freedom”

May we experience in our relationships that same tender acceptance and loving gaze of God, may it point us even more to Christ’s love, and may it transform and heal our hearts to believe how truly and marvelously we are loved -- and how much grace we are always given in spite of our flaws and weaknesses.