Love

I’ve been a long time trying to please God. All my life I think.  It’s hard work and I get discouraged.  I lose energy by the end of the day, I wake up with new resolve, I tell myself ‘just try a little harder, can’t be too far off now…’

So I thought, OK, I’m going away for three days, into where it will be beautiful and I’ll be alone doing what I love.  For a change I’m not going to try.  I’m going to remind myself what I’ve been taught, that I’m loved for who I am, not what I do.  I’ll just ask God to be with me and see what happens.

I had been spending some time going through old papers and photographs, sorting things that would be nice to keep and looking for ways to make good easily-accessible records for the generations that follow.  I’d been reading, not just skimming through, but properly reading a series of love letters between myself and my husband during a period of time when we were living in different towns before we married.

I was reminded of something I have chosen to ignore over the past few years.  I think of my mother who always seemed to be comparing herself unfavourably with others, and that now I’m a bit prone to doing the same thing, to see myself in a negative light.  However these love letters were written by someone who really did love me, who died loving me for all my inability to recognise it.

I imagine that this day when I had said to God in a heartfelt way that I really didn’t have it in me just now to try, perhaps the accumulated angels breathed a huge sigh of relief that this child was going to give herself a day off at last!  As I was walking along thinking of my husband’s love for me I said to myself ‘and God’s love is like that only much stronger, stronger than I can imagine’. 

And then – even now tears come to my eyes to recall it – it seemed like over the space of the smallest fraction of a second, it was as if God said to me ‘no it’s not, it’s like this’. And the word softer came to my mind as I sought to define what exactly that briefest of feelings was.  Not that any word or collection of words can ever describe it, and perhaps it is different for every person.  Certainly I recognise now that it is different to any human love or love from angels/celestial spirits.  Once I heard a woman coming to the realization that what she had believed was a feeling of God’s love was in fact coming from a spirit who was (I think) pretending to be God; she termed it her ‘Byron Bay’ god when she realised it.  And I think there is love that does perhaps makes us feel like we can conquer anything, that strengthens us so much.

I’m not saying God’s love doesn’t do all this and more.  The softer feeling, that pale yellow ball of whatever-it-was – well I reckon that could do anything.  But to me it meant mostly that, yes, it is completely unearned and unearnable.  It has the potential to completely infuse and surround me and nothing at all, nothing at all is demanded of me.

Often I write a poem to capture a feeling I’ve got.  I tried, it’s OK, but mostly what I discovered from my attempt was that there are just no words at all that will work to describe this, this love that comes from God. 

Nor music, nor painting, architecture, mathematical equation. And so it should be.

But a fragment of a song by Dougie Maclean came into my head, and stayed with me for the rest of the day

This love will carry

This love will carry me

I know this love will carry me.