Donald DeMarco:
Tulsi Gabbard stated, in her May 22 letter of resignation, that she has quit her post as the Director of National Intelligence. Her husband, Abraham, had been recently diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer. “At this time,” she wrote, “I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle.”
Gabbard is to be praised for doing the right thing. She is honoring the marriage vow in which spouses pledge to remain faithful to each other “in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.” She is also witnessing to something that has become increasingly rare in American culture—unconditional love. Love is primary. All else is secondary.
I recall talking to one of my students who was struggling with the knowledge that her mother has aborted one of her siblings. Students may be hungry for knowledge, but quite often they are hungering for affirmation. My student was happy to be alive. But she understood that if she had been untimely conceived, she, too, would have been prevented from entering this vale of tears. She lived because she came at the right time and under the right circumstances. She was not a recipient of unconditional love. She was the recipient of conditional acceptance.
Husband and wife pledge to each other unconditional love and unwavering fidelity. It is natural and proper that this pledge should be transferred to the child who is the beneficiary of their love. One expression of unconditional love should prepare the way for another expression of unconditional love. Love is a fire that spreads from one person to another.
God’s love for us is unconditional. We human beings rationalize ways in which conditions are given primacy. “It just wasn’t the right time.” “We already have three kids.” “We could not afford another child.” “The conception was an accident.” Thus, time and circumstance displace love. Christian teaching is replete with “hard sayings.” One that brooks no compromise comes from John 15:13, “Greater love hath no man than this: that a man lay down his life for his friends.” The moral heroism of St. Maximilian Kolbe comes to mind. He volunteered to take the place of a friend who was about to be murdered in the death camp at Auschwitz.
Love is to be fulfilled, not compromised. It cannot take back seat to convenience. Life is hard and love is just as hard. My student must forgive her mother. Where love fails, forgiveness atones. Nonetheless it is difficult to accept the fact that she was one conception away from premature extinction. I have talked to other students who struggled with the same problem. We all want to think that we came into the world because someone loved us unconditionally. How many children in today’s world must cope with the knowledge that their mothers (with the approval of their fathers, no doubt) might easily have thought of themselves as expendable.
If we believe that our parents did not love us unconditionally, does that mean that we are not loved or, even, worse, not lovable? In this case, one must believe that the God who created us also loved us unconditionally. To be loved is to feel one’s worth. The feeling that one is not lovable leads to desperate and inadequate strategies. Neither wealth nor honor nor status cannot compensate for the feeling that one is not lovable. We are created to love and be loved. Nothing else can replace this need.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 offers us meaningful words about love: “Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks / But bears it out even to the edge of doom.” It is an “ever-fixed mark.” Ancient navigators followed the North Star and no other. The Magi set their journey in accordance with the one star that shone over the Holy Family. Love is our director and conductor. It bears no substitutes.
It is better to feel loved than to feel lucky. My student will feel lucky if she compares her existence with her unlucky sibling. She will feel loved if she relates her existence to a loving God. All those who struggle with the idea that they are lucky to be alive, even though love did not inspire their being, will find solace in the fact that, despite everything, God called them into existence through his love. It should not be beyond our ability to forgive the frailties of others, especially our own parents, when forgiveness is in order.
