The old, human way

Loving people and hating them at the same time sucks. There are only a few people in my life I feel that way about. Two, to be precise. One of them I saw tonight, the one who threw my life for such a loop a year ago -- but it's the other one, the one who means more to me than anything, that I can't get out of my head.

This is tearing me apart. Sometimes I feel like I can't physically stand it anymore. I'm sitting here, crying my eyes out over a twitching computer screen, meaninglessly, fruitlessly, aimlessly. You can't make people love you. I know it. I know it. Why can't I accept it?

"God loves Karel - even more than you do - and if you ask him, he will give you his love for this man, a love nothing can prevent, nothing destroy . . . Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way, God will show us the more perfect way." (Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place)

Why can't I just love people and not care whether they love me in return? Isn't that the more perfect way? O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.

But it hurts. Oh, Daddy, it hurts.