I love you, I like you.

“Why don’t you ever say ‘I love you’?”

My hubby and I were snuggling on our bed one night when he asked the question.

At first I was indignant! “Of course I love you, what are you talking about?”

He answered.

“I know you love me Honey, but you don’t say those words to me. You say it once in awhile, like after I tell you that I love you, but I don’t really remember you saying to me on your own.”

I thought about it for a moment, wracking my brain.

“Well, I don’t just love you. I like you.”

He laughed. “That’s true! Now that you mention it, you say ‘I like you’ all the time. But what’s wrong with ‘I love you’?”

He was right, I didn’t say “I love you” very much. What was wrong with me? What was wrong with I love you?

“I love you” I said slowly, trying to explain what I meant. “I love you means that even though you are a crummy person to be with, and you are not worth loving, I am going to love you anyways because I am the bigger person.”

My hubby looked at me, bewildered.

“I like you” I continued, “means that I really truly adore being your wife, and I will never tire of being with you, and you are my favorite person. It means that I want to be with you because you are worth being with and you are special to me.”

My parents are perfectionists, and love often felt conditional when I was a child.

My Dad also had a thing against saying the words for some reason. He didn’t say “I love you”.

I remember him telling me that he didn’t “just say the words ‘I love you’” he showed it by his actions. I’m not sure what pain he has from his past that held him back from saying the actual words, it was never something he would talk about.

I do know that I heard “I love you” rarely, and when I did, it was usually connected to discipline.

Before a spanking my Mom would say “I only do this because I love you.”

In my teens my Dad often said “ I tell you about your faults because I love you. Other people who don’t love you won’t tell you about your faults, they will just treat you badly because of them. I am one of the only people that will love you despite your failings.” I didn’t really understand what it meant, but love often felt like tolerance to me. I knew my parents loved me, but I felt as though I was not worthy of their love. I felt as though they loved me because they were my parents, not because I was lovable.

My relationship with my Husband has continued to re-shape my understanding of love, his unconditional love and acceptance is a huge gift in my life.

But I find myself struggling to believe that God loves me that way.

I see God as someone who made the world and everything in it, and He loves us because He is God. Because He is supposed to love us. But really He doesn’t like us at all. He is disgusted by our sin and how we continually fall short. He harps about how He sacrificed His only son for us, and we still can’t get it together. He continues loving us because He has to, but that’s as far as it goes.

I’ve had many people tell me that I don’t have to do anything for God to love me, God loves me regardless of how I perform. I agree. But it feels like He only continues loving me because He is the bigger, better person. Not because I am special to Him. There is nothing about me that God loves in particular, there is nothing about me that makes God smile. Yes, He loves me, like He loves all other people He has made. But He doesn’t love anything that makes me who I am.

Its not that I feel as though God doesn’t love me just the way I am, I realize God’s love is unconditional, it has to be in order to be God’s love I suppose. It just doesn’t feel very deep. I feel like I am the type of person God forgets about, until I pray or get hurt or something, then maybe He is jolted back to realizing “oh yeah, I have that other kid that needs me”.

I guess God loves me, but I’m pretty sure He doesn’t like me.