Loving Unconditionally

I arrived home from work to find that Becca had very kindly turned the chicken leftovers into soup today. I told her last night that I wanted to do it then, but she insisted that it was too late for me to start cooking. What a loving thing to do, to make the soup for me, seeing as she knows how fond I am of chicken soup.

She washed and folded my laundry too, and left it neatly on my bed in the spare room.

It is strange to me that she is still willing to offer such kindness, despite her emotional coldness to me.

We don't discuss our relationship anymore, for to do so has only made her argumentative. She wants out, and that's that. Harsh.

I don't feel I know this version of Becca. Well... I have experienced a little of this behavior for very short seasons at certain points along the way of our nearly nineteen years together, but she was never this way for much longer than a couple of days at a time.

I cannot help but think of the prayer of St. Francis's, in which the saint declares:

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.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen

I must keep loving. I must keep doing what is right, despite the pain of unrequited love. The pain of rejection. I have not been perfect, indeed far from it, so certainly I now am reaping some of the pain I myself have sown into Becca's life. My various times of insensitivity, selfishness and unwillingness to sacrifice my desires for hers have come to haunt me now.

But I shall pardon her for all the pain she is dishing out to me. I do not wish to return evil for evil.
I shall keep loving - not so much with words as by deeds, because at my core I know that with all my heart I love Rebecca and I always shall.