Love

My mind boggles over the ways in which God can grow a loving relationship. I think I will never know or be able to understand the depths of God's love or anticipate new directions in which God will sometimes lead, sometimes push me tomorrow or the next day, whether those be directions of action or directions of emotion. Waking up this morning in God's embrace, I realized just how paltry are the understandings and set of emotions which I have developed over a lifetime, just how limited I am in the Presence of a limitless God, and just how wonderful it is to be loved by God. Well, maybe I don't yet know just wonderful that is because every waking with Him is more wonderful than the one before.

Every time that I fall sleep in contemplative union (or near union), always have asked for Presence during any dreams I might have (a petition that has recently replaced my earlier petition for Him to protect me from attacks of Evil, which in my early post-conversion days twice attacked me and from which I fled to God's protection), I do experience God's Presence in my dreams (at least, those I can remember in part when I wake up -- those I cannot remember, I assume have not been filled with Evil attacks, i.e. were not nightmares, because I did not wake up during the night and did not wake up disturbed but refreshed, which only the Presence of God could bring about). Something more happens on the mornings that follow the nights when I fall asleep still in contemplative union, which I have mentioned briefly in an earlier post: I wake up still embraced, as I did this morning, in an indescribably unbearable love.

That love is indescribable for it has no counterpart in my experience. It is the love for my children, spouse, parents, spouse, pets, friends, even self, all of which are different kinds of love, rolled up into one. And more. It is deeper, sweeter, and gentler than any love I have known or am able to give. It is a kind of special love for which human language (at least, the 17 human languages I know) have no words.

That love is unbearable because it is undeserved. I can think of dozens of ways in which I don't deserve that love, yet I deeply, deeply want this intimacy that goes beyond anything I have experienced on a human level, an intimacy that unnerves me for we react to human situations and feel greater or lesser comfort with them in accordance with cumulative experiences; those experiences prepare us for new variations on old themes. This intimacy, this level of love, this kind of love, though, is a new theme, not a variation on an old theme, and so I feel as confused as would a child encountering alone a new experience for the first time. Even though the occurrence of waking up wrapped in God's love has been becoming more frequent, each experience is still as the first time, so special is that love.

As a result, I strive to remain in that love; I will do anything for that love (perhaps that is why I get tasked sometimes, that and the fact that I often, perhaps because of my travels, am in the right place at the right time to provide the right help to the right person/people and just happen to be wiling to do that).

I am occasionally late to work (just by a few minutes) because it is so difficult to break away from such extraordinary. I do know that if I lock my office door and spend some time sitting with God at work, the love will be there again; really, it is with me constantly but all too often I am too preocuppied with being busy to notice it. So, knowing what lies ahead for the day, I sometimes selfishly take a few extra moments to stay embraced by God in the early morning before stepping out of bed and risk the consequences of arriving at work five or ten minutes late. Fortunately, no one has ever asked me why I am late. I am not sure how my explanation would be received!