I don’t know how to bring this to you, but I will try.

I know what I have been called to believe. I know that you are the purest reflection of love, and I know that you refer to me as loved by you. But right now, I just don’t feel it. Right now, those words seem distant, like they are meant for someone else — someone who is stronger in their faith, someone who is more whole, and more worthy. Right now, I feel like I am on the outside of love looking in, like I am reaching for something that never quite reaches back.

I don’t know when this feeling started, God. Maybe it’s been slowly building for years, adding layers and layers around my heart until I was walled off from the very thing I need the most. Maybe it’s been carved out by disappointments, by losses, by all the times I have let myself hope for something good only to have it slip away. Or maybe I’ve just never known how to let love in. Maybe there has always been something in me that feels unworthy, something that keeps me at arm’s length from the empathy and kindness I so easily give to others.

God, I don’t want to feel like this. I don’t want to sit in this space of doubt, wondering if I am too much, or too broken, or too hard to love. I don’t want to let my wounds dictate my worth. I don’t want to believe the voice in my head that tells me I am only lovable when I am doing something right, when I am being perfect, when I have earned it. Because love isn’t meant to be something I perform for. It isn’t meant to be conditional. And yet, sometimes, I struggle to believe it’s meant for me.

So please, meet me in this feeling, God. I don’t need loud declarations or grand gestures, I just need something real, something I can believe in, something I can hold onto when my heart feels empty. Let me feel your love in the quiet — through the little things, or the tenderness of connection, or the simple kindness of another person who sees me when I feel invisible. Let me find you in the ordinary. Let me find you in the spaces I haven’t thought to look.

And God, when I struggle to believe in love at all — when I can’t make it out in my relationships, when I feel unseen, and untouched by warmth, help me to remember that love is bigger than a feeling. That love is steady, even when I am unsteady. That love does not disappear just because I can’t perceive it in the moment. Help me to trust that even when I feel disconnected, even when I am numb to it, even when I doubt, I am not actually separate from you. Because you are not just beside me. You are within me, always.

And if I never fully understand what it means to be loved the way you love, if I never feel it the way I think I should — let me at least keep searching. Let me at least keep hoping. Let me at least keep my heart open, just in case. Because maybe love isn’t always some loud revelation. Maybe it isn’t always certainty. Maybe, sometimes, it’s just the decision to keep going, to keep trusting, to keep making room for something softer.

So I will keep making room, God. I will keep reaching. And even if I can’t feel it yet — I will hold onto the possibility that love has never left me, that you have never left me, and that maybe, just maybe, I have been held all along.

Amen.