How do you know when you are loved?

I know God loves me. I forget how immeasurable His love is. I forget how incredible His love feels. If I'm not having an epiphany moment or gush of spiritual abundance, its easy for me to forget. I have to go back in memory to those times when I did "feel" love and have faith in that.


I know my husband loves me. After over 20 years, its given. He's not a gushing kind of guy. I didn't train him any differently either, so the blame is on us both. I don't expect a gift for our anniversary this month. Maybe a card. He doesn't care if he gets a gift, or even an acknowledgement. That kind of thinking is so foreign to me, but I guess there are people out there like that, I live with one.


I know my children love me. my little one tells me. I think my teen is a little too old for that right now. But I tell them how much I love them. I hope they know that I sincerely mean it.


I know my parents love me. They tell me. I know how they feel about their grown children and their growing grandchildren.


I am very fortunate, and very blessed. But why don't I feel that way?

Love isn't a feeling - it's an action or a state of being. I shouldn't have to "feel" loved to know that I am loved. But it doesn't work that way for me. I still need the feeling.


How do you get that feeling? I have no idea. I could reminisce about times past when I felt that way... that might bring the feeling back. I could tell someone I love them so that they would in turn repeat the words to me. I could ask God to bestow a special blessing of "feeling loved" upon me. Yes, I'm serious, you can do that, I have done that, and its worked.

My question now is, when. When will I feel loved? Will it hit me from out of the blue? Will I just warm up to it? And how long will it last?


I guess this is where I go on faith. The faith that what my "loved ones" have told me is true. The faith that what God has told me is still in existence. The faith that even though I don't feel it, it really is there.


It's been a year since a friend committed suicide. I don't know why, I know he was angry, I saw the warning signs. I know he felt boxed in and cornered. I can't imagine the terrible thoughts that he had to build up to the point he took a gun and shot himself. He was in his early 50's, leaving two high school kids, and a wife in the wake of his impossibility.


As I attended his memorial service at a historical church here in Riverside, the minister mentioned that in all of his years as pastor he had never seen the balcony opened. The service was standing room only. This preacher had never seen this many people in his auditorium before. He knew there were at least 800 in attendance.


I sat and thought, "if you only knew" ... for each of those 800 in attendance there were scores of people not represented. If he only knew. Could life have been so bad that there wasn't one person in that auditorium that loved him enough to help him through? Had it been so long that he had felt love that he only found one way to end is misery?


I know God loves him, and I know he loved God. I know God opened His arms and welcomed him to his eternal Home. Sometimes I want to go to my eternal home. It would be a lot easier than working so hard here on earth. But I know I am loved. And I know that I love.


I am loved, and I love. So I keep doing what I am doing. When I get down I think of that auditorium filled with people, and know there is someone that can help me through.


How do I know I am loved? I don't feel it. It's not always said. But I know God loves me, and I know that I love, and I know that love is being returned, whether I feel it or not. I have to take it on faith, and just know it.

Now go tell someone you love them.

KM 11/7