The Steady Presence
As requested, I am dedicating this article to the steady presence type of love...
Dear fellow writers,
After writing my article on “Love”, Abidemie. commented and was captivated by my section on the Steady Presence. I promised to highlighted this by giving it its own article where I can explore it more in depth. As mentioned in said article, this is my favorite to contemplate and work on.
Before we get into it, however I’m going to place my definition of love here for contemplation:
Love is constant, enduring. Love isn’t always easy. Love is being there even when it gets hard. Love never gives up. Love is choosing someone over everything else. Love is choosing someone over yourself. Love is choosing someone in everything. - Mena the Writer
The Steady Presence: a Detailed Look
While I was in our Adult Spiritual Enrichment class on Sunday at Church, we listened to a priest talk about almost exactly what I wanted to say. The perfect example of this type of love is Jesus.
Jesus will forgive you no matter what if you are sorry. He is all-merciful no matter how far we stray or how much we hurt him. As long as you repent and try to do better He will forgive you. He knows we make mistakes and can easily be lead away from the straight and narrow path, but when we pick ourselves back up and get back on track, he is there.
A beautiful poem highlighting this very kind of love is “the Hound of Heaven” by Francis Thompson. God is compared to a hunting hound who is eternally in pursuit of the sinner. The sinner is trying to escape God with worldly pleasures and sins but finds only disappointed. But God does not force the sinner to come back; he pursues him from afar, waiting. The misery comes from the futile run from God, not from God himself, but the encounters with it are designed to bring the sinner back to Him. God is relentless, faithful, and deliberate, when pursuing us. He wants us to come back and wants to forgive us.
Since Jesus is all-merciful in this way, and He has committed no sin or offended us in any way, how can we not be merciful to others? How can we not forgive others for what they do to us? We certainly are not perfect so we must pray for the courage to find it in our hearts to forgive each other.
To love someone does not always mean hugging and kissing them and forgetting that they hurt you, but rather forgiving them and hoping for the best for them. If someone physically hurt you, for example, you are allowed to distance yourself and have time for yourself. This is where you pray; you pray for the strength to forgive them and not hold a grudge against them, making peace in your heart with them.
If they choose to keep hurting you, then this is on their soul. They have chosen the path to destruction since you have done everything you could to help them. You must remember to take care of your own body which is a sacred thing, and protect it from harm.
A consistent bond…a quiet devotion…deep affection…a silent assurance…
This is love takes waiting and patience; waiting for the person to see you, to see that you have been there for them. It takes patience to see them fall, run, or hurt themselves so many times before they realize you have been there all along.
It can also be the other way around: you finally realize someone has been there for you, waiting for you to notice. They have watched you make mistakes and dealt with your faults and yet they still wait, patiently.
The Steady Presence: Examples
Now that we have looked at this enduring love in detail, we can look at a few more examples. The first one I described is the greatest love there is: Jesus’ love for you.
Once again we can see this love in the relationship between Thor and Loki. Thor who watches Loki make mistakes again and again, only harming himself. While Thor waits patiently for Loki to see him so that he can forgive him and they can be brothers again.
This is a minor example but Hermione’s love for Ron in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is also like this. When Ron starts dating Lavender, she still loves him but distances herself from him so she won’t be hurt. She waits for Ron to see that she loved him all along. He does see this pretty quickly though.
In Spider-Man 1-3, we see this love as well when Ursula cares for Peter Parker even while he is so invested in Mary Jane that he does not realize it. She is there for him when he needs someone, baking cake or cookies, or telling him Mary Jane called to cheer him up. She wants to see him happy even though he doesn’t notice her or love her back.
During Blair’s relationship with Prince Louis in Gossip Girl, Dan also displays this type of love. He is an unwavering presence while she navigates her stressful relationship with the Prince and her ever present feelings for Chuck. Even though she is not romantically involved with him at the time, he is the anchor she needs during this period of her life. He always made sure she was ok, addressed her feelings for the others before he started anything with her, and stood by her side the whole way.
I also try to be this steady presence for my sister. No matter what I will always be there for her. There are sometimes I ask myself why I am doing something and it is the same answer every time: because I love her and because she wants this. Even when I do not understand what’s wrong or why she won’t talk sometimes. I will be everything for her: someone to talk to, someone to support her, encourage her, a quiet assurance, a shoulder to cry on, and most importantly, a friend and mentor.
Thank you guys for reading! Let me know what you think in the comments
This was so sweet! That's beautiful how much this past week inspired you to write this. And thank you for always being there. 💖🥹I hope I can do the same for you too.
There is something almost unbearable in how you hold this kind of love, where the proof is not in grand gestures but in the quiet decision to stay. You are naming the kind of steady presence that lets someone fall apart and still trust there is a place their heart can come home to, which is often the first time a woman’s internal landscape learns that devotion does not have to arrive with drama to be real.