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+What Can I Do To Make You Love Me?
+##################################
+
+:status: draft
+:category: faith
+:tags: relationships, love, marriage
+:date: 
+
+I cannot stop the angelic voice of Andrea Corr singing in my head her
+song_ “What Can I Do”. Verses “What can I do to make you love me? //
+What can I do to make you care?” got me stuck in the seemingly endless
+loop. The feeling is so persistent that I started to contemplate what
+I should understand my head to be telling me. Given that I have been
+happily married for almost twenty years I don’t think I should take this
+song too literally for myself. Also rather obvious was my first
+reaction; “to make you love me”? That does sound awfully manipulative
+and thus not very much as the faith-filled solution.
+
+.. _song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=234u2ZV8HNY
+
+The song is very simple with a very simple (and perhaps because of that
+so beautiful) melody and similarly simple story: a lady is in love with
+a man but her love is not reciprocated and so she cannot sleep in the
+night and she is tormented by these questions. Her heart aches, she
+feels trapped in her feelings, and she is desperately looking for an
+answer.
+
+Many “good Christians” would consider the feelings themselves wrong or
+even sinful. After all, the ideal image of the marriage is preserved for
+us in Genesis 2:22: “And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the
+man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.” God will bring
+a woman to a man and so the right marriage is just a matter of faith and
+obedience and falling in love doesn’t have any place in the heart of
+a faithful Christian. Is this perhaps the right answer for the lady’s
+heart? Just confess those feelings as a sin, repent, and trust the Lord!
+
+The wisdom of this world revealed to us in almost all movies, TV shows,
+songs, and elsewhere is the exact opposite. Feelings of love are
+something which most closely resembles the secular variant of the voice
+of God: we have to follow them in order to achieve the true love (which
+is as close as you can get to the concept of salvation in the secular
+philosophy), and there is nothing which can stand against this call,
+because resistance to it is the root of all evil. This secular mysticism
+of following our feelings gets a bit more complicated with other
+feelings.  What to do with our feeling of hate, envy, or sorrow, when we
+want to be “honest to our feelings” as the phrase goes?
+
+I remember a discussion with one young friend who was in a similar
+situation as the lady in the song. He is hopelessly in love with a girl,
+but she doesn’t reciprocate the love to him. What did I understand from
+his talk that he obviously didn’t want to force his feelings on her (“to
+make her love him”), but he was stuck with the unrequited feelings of
+love in his heart and he didn’t know what to do. I felt from him
+a little bit of guilt that he cannot control his emotions.
+
+I was thinking about a moment in my life when I was in a similar
+situation. I had asked out a girl and I had understood her answer as
+refusing me.  I felt as my duty not to bother her anymore, but still
+I was struggling in the same manner as this guy with all those feelings
+for my lady I had which I could not get rid off. Actually, how we are
+supposed to control our feelings? I can, and I should, control my
+decisions and deeds, I should not let my feelings control my decisions,
+but how to get rid of the feelings themselves? I don’t know about that.
+
+I prayed about this and after a long time I believe the answer was
+something like: you are right, you cannot control your feelings, and you
+shouldn’t. There are those moments in our lives when we are supposed to
+live in the discomfort (or even pain) of unanswered questions. Feelings
+are signs of the things going on deeper in our hearts and one of the
+ways how to get in touch with them. We could, and we should, keep our
+decisions right (so, in my case, I was sure I really shouldn’t bother
+the lady of my heart with the unwelcome attention; whether I was right
+in being mostly passive is another question, but that isn’t the point
+now). Feelings should make us to query whether our attitudes are right;
+so in my case I went once again to the place where I was able to
+proclaim to the God that I want not mine but God’s will to happen (Luke
+22:42). For somebody else the issue could be forgiveness or asking for
+it. However, even though we may be in the right place with our hearts,
+even though we may not sin with our feelings controlling our decisions,
+there is still no guarantee that the pain will go away.
+
+Many times Bible calls true believers as “those who wait for the Lord".
+Let us see for example Isaiah 40:31 (ESV):
+
+    […] they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they
+    shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be
+    weary; they shall walk and not faint. 
+
+This promise is not a universal promise for every believer. It is only
+for those who wait for the Lord. It seems we must be willing to wait, to
+suffer an amount of pain from the unresolved situation, to be able to
+gain from this promise.
+
+Presence of painful feelings doesn’t mean that our attitudes or deeds
+are sinful. There are many alternatives and we shouldn’t be too quick to
+exclude anyone of them. In this case of the unrequited love, it may be
+that the guy is really wrong and he just needs to wait until the Lord
+heals his wounded heart, and perhaps helps him to recover trust in God
+in places where he didn’t trust him before (which will probably require
+some amount of repentance). However, of course, there are other
+variants. Any relationship, and especially the love between man and
+woman, is the work of two, and it is very much possible that the lady is
+wrong in this case and the guy needs to wait for the change of her heart
+(or perhaps even help her to achieve such change?). Or perhaps they need
+to live through the time of purification of their hearts before they are
+prepared for their love to start in purity. Or perhaps some other
+circumstances need to change for their acquittance to start well. Or
+… there are just so many possible situations we cannot control. And if
+we are in the situation of somebody who is asked for help, there are so
+many situations that we cannot give good advice for. Of course, even for
+advisers it is a question of their pain of uncertainty whether the other
+person finds the right answer to their questions.
+
+We all need to pray and wait for the Lord to come.