Break-up excuse: I love you, I’m just not in love with you.
Why it sucks in human relationships: I could write a book on this one. It sucks because it is mysterious in many ways – what, after all, is the difference between “love” and “in love” – or is there even a difference? This line is crap, complete and utter crap. You love football, you love a dog, but you aren’t in love with football or a dog (if you are you have bigger problems than I can tackle in this blog). In some ways I could see a difference between “love” and “in love” but at the end of the day it becomes a semantics battle that really isn’t worth any mental effort. Someone once told me this excuse boils down to this: “I’m not attracted to you anymore. Sure, maybe I once was, but I’m not anymore and I haven’t been for a while. And I don’t really feel like trying to get that attraction back or reignite the flame that once burned between us.” Doesn’t that just irritate you? Fine, don’t try, just throw the relationship away.
Why it sucks when using it with God: Instead of it boiling down to attraction like it does between humans, it boils down to something even more painful with God, “You’re a cool guy and all, but I don’t really feel like giving You my whole life and submitting to a loving relationship with You. I don’t want to be that open with You.” It kind of goes with this saying I love, “it is one thing to believe in God, it is an entirely different notion to believe God.” It is one thing to love someone or to love God, but it is an entirely different notion to be in love with someone or to be in love with God – it takes far more heart, trust, faith and vulnerability to truly be in love with someone and even more so to be in love with God.
Why this excuse doesn’t work on God: Because its only the beginning of a relationship with God. We start by loving Him, by being enamored by Him in all of His awesomeness, His unfailing love, His mercy. We start there…we, God willing, don’t finish there. We are called to continue on this journey of love and truly fall in love with Him, submitting ourselves to loving Him completely and allowing Him to fill us.
How to move on: Continue on the journey. That doesn’t mean you won’t regress from time to time, we all do. But the beauty is that this life is a journey, a love story that God has been writing since before…time. A love story that isn’t complete with a simple admiration for God…it is completed when we meet Him, but in order to meet Him in Heaven we are invited to fall deeply, madly, passionately in love with Him, to journey with Him to a love far deeper than we could ever imagine on our own.
Loving Jesus, help us move from a simplistic love of You to a deep, abiding love. Help us each day to fall even more in love with You, and so freely and wholly submit ourselves to Your love and all that You are and all that You desire of us. AMEN.
