The Healing Journey

June 19, 2025

We spend so much of our lives looking for love, acceptance, and approval in countless situations. We want to be liked, we want to be recognized, and most importantly, we want to be loved. It’s the same for every person, although many don’t realize it, and they lash out in anger precisely because they do not feel loved.

Why is there so little love in the world when love is essentially our reason for existing? Perhaps because there is so much fake love in the world. Much of social media is based on the pursuit of fake love and acceptance, which is why young people are obsessed with taking selfie photos and using photo editing apps to change their appearance, all in the relentless quest to be liked and loved.

At our core, we seek love, but so often we seek it in the wrong places and in the wrong ways. In gangs, in bad relationships, in self-promotion, in taking more than giving, in destructive forms of entertainment.

Many of us feel unlovable, perhaps because of our childhoods or damaged relationships or — tragically — because we don’t measure up to the standards that the world sets for transactional love.

And yet we are loved. We are loved beyond our wildest dreams, but we seldom realize it because our human selves place a higher standard on seeking love here rather than recognizing the perfect love of God in our lives. The love in the next world is infinitely satisfying. Have you ever read an account of a near-death experience? Virtually every person who has experienced one does not want to return because they have finally found that which they craved all their lives: perfect unconditional love and acceptance, regardless of their faults and failures and flaws.

Empty your mind and sit in silence in front of the tabernacle. Rest. There, you do not have to earn love. You may not realize it, but you will be filled with love that you can then bring to the world, which is in desperate need of love … and only God’s love can satisfy that need. When you do this, you will be able to love without the expectation of receiving anything in return. God’s love is capable of healing our hurts, our rejections and our grief.
©J Pisani

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