A little love that grows - The Love planted in us all

I had an interesting experience when Matteo was born.

I am a pretty emotional and joyous guy, so I expected that I would be blown away by some kind of emotion when my baby was born, but I wasn’t. At first, I thought something might be wrong with me, but I didn’t have long to dwell on it because I had to get to the task of taking care of the baby.

For the next few days taking care of Mary Anne and baby Matteo consumed most of my time and mental energy. Yet, I began to notice something. There was this special and powerful love in me for this child. It honestly felt like it had always been there, only now it was being given a chance to express itself and to grow. As the days continued this love just kept growing until it was far stronger and more consistent than any kind of shocking emotion one might experience in a moment.

Once I had time, I began to reflect on this and began to realize that the things that were most special and my greatest loves had this reality in my life. Whether it was my love for my family, for friends, for theatre, music, film, or my wife. There were always important things that were pretty amazing about these things or people to me, but they all started with a gentle almost imperceptible kind of love that always seemed to be a part of me, but then grew and grew. None of them really started with infatuation, idolization, or something of that sort. In fact, I can remember times when theatre or people became crushes or idols and they became less for it. It was the lasting and grow gentle love though that would become most powerful and important to me.

It has been the exact same in my faith life. There has been this love in me, this joy, this passion that at times seemed almost imperceptible, but as I have come to know God, to grow closer to him, to serve him I have seen grow more and more in me. I have come to know heights of emotion, bliss, elation, revelation, serenity and more that I have never known before. The beautiful thing is that this growing love for God has helped me to experience it in everything else more and more as well.

I believe we all have a great love for God planted in us. It has always been there so you might not even realize it is there. You only have to come closer to him, get to know him, serve him and have faith in him to see that love grow to almost imperceivable levels while also remaining as consistent as we remain with him.