Bad Relationships Show Us What God's Love Is Like

At breakfast one weekend morning, I had an epiphany: relationships are like parables. They illustrate what God’s love for us is (or isn’t) like.

So while I ate, I wrote out a few of mine.

“He drew her to himself, but only so he could use her for his pleasure. When she chose not to participate, he emotionally abused her.”

That's not what God's love is like.

“She had to grasp for access to him, and he awarded it to her only when convenient. He wanted her only if his having her cost him nothing.”

And that’s not what God's love is like.

“He pursued her. She felt held sacred because of it. But he was only available to her to a shallow degree. He was more committed to keeping her at a distance than to going distances for her or with her.”

That's not what God's love is like, either.

I used to think relationships like these were unfortunate.

People using people. People who don’t want to love, dating people who do. People who aren’t all in, dating people who are.

Now I think they’re magnificent.

Of course it was painful to live these stories. And it was probably painful for you to live some of yours.

Because there is pain in hoping a man wants all of you and learning that he doesn’t. There is pain in desiring a marriage proposal but getting a breakup. There is pain in feeling ready to make a man or woman your spouse who, as it turns out, isn’t ready to be a husband or wife or, frankly, doesn’t want to be yours.

I had moments—days, or weeks, even—when this stuff wrecked me.

When I cried through entire Sunday masses. When thought I’d never date again. When I was certain no man would ever really want me.

Because what are you supposed to do or think when you’re so sure about a person who isn’t so sure about you? Or when a man or woman totally could love you well but just keeps choosing not to?

I have learned what you’re supposed to do—you’re supposed to accept it for what it is: a reminder from our Creator.

“This isn’t how I love you. And this isn’t how I love you. And this isn’t how I love you, either,” He says.

He has said it so far about every dating relationship of mine that has ended.

And you know, we have all been unloved. We have all been unloving. But these stories are magnificent, despite the pain, because marriage isn’t our ultimate goal. Communion with God is.

That’s what marriage is intended to illustrate.

We are called to create marriage in a context in which we give and never count the cost. A context in which we sacrifice. It’s supposed to a space in which we safely can be naked, wholly exposed (in every way, including emotionally), without shame. Where love isn’t “blind.” It sees everything and stays anyway.

Because this—THIS is how He loves you.

Accepting that changes everything, including our breakups.

They don’t hurt so badly when they remind us that better human love—love inspired by God’s—is actually possible.

And they’re worth enduring when in the end, they remind us of what God’s love is like.