If your crush doesn’t like you back
I was in love. But there was a problem. Three other guys also liked this girl, and she couldn’t seem to make up her mind among us. She was overwhelmed by all the attention. I was in agony. How could I get her to like me more?
As I thought about my sad situation one evening, it occurred to me that I could pray about it. I’d grown up going to Christian Science Sunday School, where I’d learned how to pray—though mostly, up to this point, my parents or a Christian Science practitioner had prayed on my behalf. This time, I figured I should try praying on my own.
I reached for a copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the textbook of Christian Science written by Mary Baker Eddy. I turned to the first chapter, titled “Prayer,” to the place where Mrs. Eddy gives her spiritual interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer from the Bible (see pp. 16–17). I read it over slowly a few times.
Three other guys also liked this girl, and she couldn’t seem to make up her mind between us.
Nothing. I closed the book.
Now what?
I closed my eyes and silently, earnestly asked God to help me.
Almost immediately, I heard a thought from God. It was so clear that it sounded like a voice. “Love is reflected in love,” it said, which was a snippet from the prayer I’d just been reading in Science and Health.
I’d never gotten an answer to prayer so quickly and definitively before. What it said to me was that divine Love, which is a biblical name for God, is always expressed in our experience. Love with a capital L refers to God, the infinite source of all real love, which is “impartial and universal” (Science and Health, p. 13). Love with a lowercase l is what is expressed in our lives.
Divine Love always blesses, and it can—and does—heal. It is unselfish, freeing, and redeeming. But our own sense of love, if it isn’t spiritually based, can be selfish, obsessive, possessive. Human love shouldn’t be discarded, though. We should strive to lift it up and purify it through understanding God as Love, so that it approaches the divine ideal. That’s the kind of love I was being urged to express. I didn’t need to figure out how to make myself more lovable; I needed to be more loving. And if I were expressing that higher, more spiritual sense of love, this girl would have to reflect that love back to me. That was divine law—right?
After this awesome answer to my prayer, I thought for sure this girl would fall into my arms.
She did not.
But something unexpected happened. It seemed right to tell one of my “rivals” about my experience. He was a fellow Christian Scientist, a casual friend, and we’d even joked about our shared predicament. At the time, he was deeply discouraged about his relationship with this girl, and he seemed to take my inspiration to heart. Years later, he told me that he’d been profoundly moved by the unselfishness of my reaching out, when he was, after all, a competitor.
While our crushes on the girl faded, our friendship endured. This was Love being reflected in love.
This sharing deepened and strengthened our friendship. It led to many more conversations about Christian Science and its role in our lives. While our crushes on the girl faded, our friendship endured. This was Love being reflected in love.
I had much more to learn about love—in high school and beyond. And while I don’t wish on anyone the emotional anguish of unrequited love, for me, it became an opportunity for prayer—prayer that was answered with a life lesson about the law of Love.
If you’re struggling with the concept of love, you can turn confidently to God. I am still in awe of that timely “angel” message that led to my realization that I am always, and ever have been, in Love.
