During one of the quieter lulls of the work week, I had listened to a small snippet from NPR radio.
I usually do this silly thing where I click on links that people swear are really emotional and will make you cry, and I watch/read it challenging myself not to. (If you’ve read any of my past posts, you’d know that my emotional threshold is rather low.) Anyways, the small snippet was this moving love story of a husband and wife, elderly, and madly in love. The story goes from when they first met, to getting married, and now… Through a back and forth between husband and wife, we are able to brush lightly over the intricacies of their love. The husband leaving short love letters on the table saying things like, “To my princess, the weather out today is extremely rainy, I’ll call you at eleven twenty in the morning – And I love you, I love you, I love you.” At the end of the segment, we find out that the husband is ill, and instead of taping him in a recording booth, they record Danny from his bed, where he laid next to his wife, Annie.
There was a sentence that, as I was listening, had latched onto my heart somehow. I couldn’t help but write it down, thinking that maybe I could keep it as a reminder of how I would want someone to love me. That great love God had promised me.
“I always said the only thing I have to give you was a poor gift, and it’s myself, and I always gave it, and if there’s a way to come back and give it, I’ll do that too.”
I thought it was so beautiful. I wanted love like that.
During Adoration late one evening, I was kneeling in the silence and darkness of the church, with only the Monstrance before me on the alter. And as I looked at Him, I felt such love… this overwhelming love both emanating from my heart as I reached for Him, and from Him sweeping, and covering, and filling me. I can’t explain it… But as I kneeled there, my arm reached behind me, to the journal which I brought. I flipped hurriedly through the pages until I found the part I was looking for. As I kneeled there, He said these words to me…
“I always said the only thing I have to give you was a poor gift, and it’s myself, and I always gave it, and if there’s a way to come back and give it, I’ll do that too.”
My Great Love.
The one I thought I had been waiting for… was already before me. The smile that had spread across my face was so great, and the joy that filled me so abundant… He had already loved me enough that He gave Himself for me. And if He could do it all over again, He would. Despite the pain, all over again, He would. That is how He loves us.