Guest Post: My Discovering of God’s Unconditional Love
by Rose
A month after I turned nineteen, I sat beside my dying father’s hospital bed to tell him goodbye. He died five days later while I was attending school at Brigham Young University. My distraught, destitute, chronically ill mom was grief-stricken when her soulmate passed so I made funeral arrangements with my half-siblings. I returned to school after the funeral feeling overwhelmed with life. My dad and I had been remarkably close, and I missed him terribly. I couldn’t foresee how I would finish school without his help and had some heart-to-heart visits with God on my half-hour walks to school each day. I told God I was afraid, lonely, and overwhelmed. I wanted desperately to finish school, and I couldn’t picture how I would do so without my dad.
After a week or two of these soulful visits with God, one afternoon as I walked to school and poured out my heart to Him, I felt like He was physically embracing me. He told me He loved me unconditionally and that I would be okay. He revealed to me that His love is infinite and eternal, not only for me but for everyone on earth. He showed me the unfathomable beauty of the world He had created and whispered to my heart that I was not alone.
This singular event transformed my life. With divine help, I finished school in three years and completed a master’s degree in the fourth. I met a wonderful man when I began my master’s degree, and we have been married for fifty-five years.
I wish I could say that I have always held the knowledge of that transformative experience close to my heart, but life happens. Post-partum depression, chronic anxiety, and traumatic events have sometimes stripped the knowledge that God genuinely loves me from my heart. In the past decade, I have undergone eight major surgeries which have at times left me feeling frightened and confused. Sometimes I wonder why I must suffer so and why so many on earth are hungry, unhoused, and without hope. At times, the weight of humanity’s suffering seems crushing, and I long to make a bigger difference in the world around me. For the time being, my biggest contribution to the world seems to be stringing words together and loving others fiercely.
However, in moments of contemplation, I can sometimes recapture the visceral knowledge I once had that God loves me infinitely, just as he loves everyone else. That may be the only thing I know to be true. As my foundational attachment to the LDS Church has unraveled, I still cling to my trust in a Divine Power that loves everyone on earth unconditionally. I believe They love their children as fervently as I love mine. Nothing my children could do would cause me to love them less. I believe in a God that loves like that–and more.
When I hear my religious leader talk about a God who loves others conditionally, I wonder if he has experienced God’s unfathomable love in the way I have. I am writing this to remind myself—and perhaps you as well—that you are enough and that you are magnificent just the way you are today. A God who loves anyone less would not be worth worshiping.
Rose finds joys in serving the marginalized and in speaking up for them.
