It is sometimes true that the most loving thing to do is to
hide your love.
This truth barely makes sense in a society that tells us
that self expression is the reason for our existence. There is a sense in which love is the
expression of our feelings. But the
expression doesn’t make the love. The
love waits behind the doing and the saying and the sharing. And even when there is no doing or sharing,
it can still be there, that feeling that makes what happens to another person
matter more than what happens to yourself.
If you are lucky, or if you are reckless, you will get to
express your love. What impulse is
inside you: to dance with joy (or cry alone), to leave a love note, to give a
gift, to plant a kiss, to meet an other’s eyes with shining esteem – will rise
to the surface and exist as this event in the world, something for history if
history concerned itself with such details.
It has been known to happen that these gestures have, though sincerely
manifesting love, been missed or mistaken, and the object of love has not known
the heart behind them. Love can be real,
and can be acted out, without being communicated.
Communication is precious in love! One person is enabled to
make another person know some part of their heart. When they do, the beloved must choose to
receive the love or else stiffen and fight against it. It is an everyday treasure too much taken for
granted, that received love can bloom into reciprocation. The beloved doesn’t just say, “I know,” or
even, “Thank you”; they say, “I love you, too.” They join the embrace. Sometimes this sharing is the only thing we
have in mind when we use the word love.
“I love you,” doesn’t exist only as a tender voice to
thrilling feelings. It can be a battle
cry, a resolute declaration of will, and it can go on being said and meant when
feelings slacken or are buried beneath a hoard of life’s other matters. These words then, and the choices that
accompany them, are just as truly love as the fluttering heart or the
passionate heat the movies portray.
So sometimes that will, with or without emotions, must
choose to do what is good for the other, even if that good is to give space, to
keep quiet, to deny the fulfillment and gratification of one’s own being – so
that the other person can be and do and find out and focus on what they need,
on what God is doing in their life at that moment. It can be like that for a short time, a long
time, or forever. I do not believe it is
wrong to love like this, though I believe it would be wrong for a marriage to
harbor this kind of love. Often it is so
secret that no one will laud it. It is
so noble that our culture despises it.
This is an act of love.
To God be all glory.
