Love Means Going through the Motions

She was seven years old that summer, the second summer she and her sisters came to live with me. Seven years old and still throwing the tantrums she’d thrown when she was three, tantrums so long and so violent I worried for her safety. I was at my wits’ end with that little one. I’ve known some tough kids, but this one took the cake. And I prayed for her and I prayed about her and it occurred to me that maybe she was lashing out because she needed attention. She’s a physical touch girl through and through, so I sat her down and talked with her about how maybe if we snuggled more it would help her to calm down. And I made her a promise:

“No matter how much trouble you’re in, if you can ask me for a snuggle, we’ll take a time out together and snuggle. Because I love you and I want you to know that.”

It’s a great idea. Trouble is, she really wanted me to prove that I loved her. So she’d push and push and push me until I was almost at my breaking point, then she’d look up with a glint of pure malice in her eyes and ask me to snuggle her.

And I would bite back every objection, every bit of justified rage, every shred of pride. I would take a deep breath and hold her and stroke her hair and murmur to her how I loved her.

I wanted to drop kick her.

As I sat there telling her how much I loved her, I wanted to scream and throw her out of the house. I wanted to be done with this child.¹ I didn’t feel lovey. Not one bit.

And I don’t think I ever loved her more.

I didn’t like her much in the moment.² I didn’t want to tell her I loved her or how sweet and good she was. I wanted to show her everything she was doing wrong. I wanted to fix her attitude and make her compliant so that all our lives could have a little peace in them. I wanted to change her. There was nothing there that the world would call love.

But that’s when I loved her the most. Not because I felt lovey feelings but because I chose to love her.

If you’ve been in any kind of relationship for more than 6 days–or seen Frozen–you know that love is sacrifice. It doesn’t just require sacrifice, it IS sacrifice. Love isn’t a feeling, it’s a choice. And as wonderful as romantic feelings or maternal feelings are, they aren’t love. Love isn’t really love, I think, until it’s hard. That’s when it finally stops being about us.

This is why marriage is indissoluble: because it’s hard and the hard is good. That’s what kills our selfishness and makes us more like Christ. This is why babies are awful. Because as wonderful as they are, we might love them only for our own sake. When they’re colicky or teething or doing stranger danger and a sleep regression at the same time, that’s when we die to ourselves to live for them. That’s real love.

And I think that kind of love means sometimes you do what you don’t feel because you wish you felt it. It means stopping for a real kiss goodbye in the chaos of the morning routine. It means compliments on a job poorly done but well meant. It means murmuring soft words to a screaming child who you’d rather leave by the side of the road than spend the next 16 years–the next lifetime–nurturing.

It’s not being fake. You’re not doing what you don’t mean, you’re doing what you don’t feel. You’re saying or touching or smiling exactly what you want to mean. You go through the motions and that going through the motions is a powerful act of love and a step back toward the feelings you wish you had.

But you knew that. You learned about the whole “fake it till you make it” thing when you were stressing out about looking cool at your first dance.

Do you know it’s true of prayer, too? Not just that it gets easier as you just suck it up and do it. It’s actually especially pleasing to God when you just suck it up and do it.

For weeks now, I’ve been struggling in prayer. I’m always good about praying, but I’m not good at it and lately it’s been dragging me down. I’ll give an impassioned talk about how amazing God is and then go stare at a tabernacle and feel nothing, think nothing, get nothing.

So I keep sitting there before the Lord. And I keep saying this same thing:

Jesus, I wish I loved you as much as I pretend to love you.

Over and over I’ve sat there thinking how amazing my prayer life would be if I really felt all the things I pretend to feel. They’re not lies, just vestiges of things I’ve felt before. Things I really feel when I’m talking about them, maybe, but not things I feel when it’s just me and him. And I wonder what it would be like to feel those things all the time.

Jesus, I wish I loved you as much as I pretend to love you.

For weeks I prayed that prayer, not petitioning so much as stewing, until he told me:

You do.³ You act like you would act if you felt it. Not perfectly, of course, but you show up. Every day you show up, just the same as you would if you really enjoyed it. You go through the motions not because you’re getting something out of it but because you’re giving me something. You’re giving me yourself even when it feels I’m giving nothing back. You aren’t pretending you love me. You really love me.

You don’t have to get butterflies every time you receive. You don’t have to be totally focused in prayer. You don’t have to be zealous like Francis Xavier or humble like Thomas Aquinas⁴ or brave like Catherine of Alexandria. There were probably days when Francis wasn’t zealous like Francis and Catherine quaked with fear. Sanctity isn’t a measure of how you feel but of what you choose to do.

I’ve never been more proud of my little sister than on the countless occasions I’ve seen her speak sweetly to a wild, raging toddler. I know she doesn’t feel lovey in that moment but she chooses to act like she loves them. When she does that, she loves more truly than if she were rapturous at the thought of another moment with her cherubs because she is choosing love rather than being driven by her feelings.

I think the Lord feels the same about us. I think that when prayer is boring or faith is hard or NFP seems like it will be the death of you that’s the moment when heaven rejoices at your small victories in finishing the rosary or speaking truth or whatever seems so hollow and fake right now.

"It's more honorable to have doubts and defeat them than never to have doubts." -Louis de Wohl

— Meg Hunter-Kilmer (@MegHunterKilmer) June 18, 2015

I guess all I’m saying is if you’re trying, even a little bit, the Lord is pleased with you. He sees your brokenness and sin and complete inability to love him well. But he sees that you try and the desire to please him does please him.

That little girl–now a big tough high schooler who still likes to cuddle–didn’t need me to feel good about her. She needed me to love her even when I didn’t feel good. In the end, that’s what she was looking for: someone who would love her when she was unlovable. Maybe God withholds the feelings we so long for to teach us to love him when he doesn’t seem lovable.

Keep on going through the motions. Do what you wish you wanted to do as though you wanted to do it–with God and with friends and with in-laws and with spouses and kids–and trust that you are enough. All he wants is your effort–he’ll bring it to perfection. Don’t let your inadequacies stop you. You are enough.

 

1. There’s a reason parents come in twos. It is HARD to raise kids–especially defiant ones–without backup or relief or someone to talk things over with. If God calls me to have kids, I sure hope he gives me a husband to go along with them. [↩]
2. Though oxytocin’s a powerful thing, and I’m a physical touch person myself, so it did help a little. [↩]
3. I don’t hear voices in prayer. Some people do and that’s awesome. But I’m just going to paraphrase the sense I got in prayer. Don’t get all excited and think I’m a mystic or something. [↩]
4. Have you read The Quiet Light by Louis de Wohl? I love all his books but this one was incredible. [↩]