The Invisible Wall

The Last Time He Said "I Love You"

Lisa gently closed the bedroom door and stood motionless in the dark hallway. Through the thin wall, she could hear Mark's steady breathing as he drifted off to sleep. Three words, she thought. Three words he had spoken like every other night before turning off the light: "I love you too."

But that evening, for the first time in five years of marriage, those words had hit her like stones thrown against glass. Not out of cruelty. Not from indifference. But because of the vast distance she suddenly perceived between what those words meant to him and what her heart desperately tried to communicate when she had whispered them first.

For Mark, "I love you" emerged from the safe territory of gratitude — for the dinner carefully prepared, for the house always kept tidy, for reliable companionship. Words spoken with sincerity, but from the protected sanctuary of routine and predictability.

For Lisa, "I love you" was a cry from the depths. Deep calling to deep. A complete opening of her heart that begged to be seen, recognized, inhabited. It was the vulnerable revelation of an inner world made of hidden dreams, unspoken fears, hopes she didn't even dare fully articulate.

Two people. Three identical words. Two parallel universes orbiting the same star without ever touching.

The Curse of Babel Revisited

At the Tower of Babel, the Lord confused the languages of men—but the Hebrew text reveals a truth more subtle and devastating than popular tradition suggests.

"Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other" (Genesis 11:7, NIV). The Hebrew verb balal—"to confuse"—doesn't simply mean multiplying vocabularies. It means to mix, to fragment meaning itself, to privatize the very experience of understanding.

The real curse of Babel wasn't that people began speaking different languages, but that they began meaning different things with the same words. From that moment, every human being inhabits a solitary linguistic tower, where every term—"love," "home," "security," even "God"—takes on shades, colors, weights that derive exclusively from their own unrepeatable story.

The sin of Babel wasn't architectural ambition. It was the illusion of building perfect communication based on human similarity, without recognizing that every heart is a mystery known fully only to God.

As Ecclesiastes writes with ruthless clarity: "Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?" (Ecclesiastes 3:21, NIV). No one. Not even ourselves, completely. And certainly not the other person, no matter how much we love them.

The Paradox of Incarnate Love

When the Word became flesh, God Himself entered this condition of fragmented communication. Christ spoke Aramaic, a specific language, limited, loaded with all the ambiguities and imperfections of human language. His words were subject to misunderstanding—like when He spoke of destroying the temple and the disciples didn't understand He was speaking of His body.

Even incarnate God experienced the impossibility of perfect communication. In Gethsemane, Christ prayed the same prayer three times, as if even He had to struggle to find the right words to express the inexpressible agony of His soul.

But here emerges the luminous paradox: precisely through this limitation, Christ revealed a form of love deeper than one that depends on perfect understanding. A love that doesn't require intellectual fusion, but incarnate presence. A love that knows how to dwell in the mystery of the other without claiming to possess them completely.

When Christ said "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46, NIV) on the cross, even those present misunderstood, thinking He was calling Elijah. But the Father understood. Not because the words were perfect, but because true love transcends the limits of human language.

Deep Calling to Deep

At two in the morning, Lisa sat on the living room couch, wrapped in a bathrobe that still smelled of the detergent Mark had chosen because it "lasted longer." The house was silent, but her heart was screaming the question that David had sung in his deepest psalms: "Deep calls to deep."

Suddenly, that phrase from the Psalms took on a new, personal, heart-wrenching meaning. Her inner depths were calling to Mark's depths—but between them was a silence that seemed deafening. Not because they didn't love each other, but because human love must always reckon with the irreducible otherness of the other.

Yet, right in that moment of ruthless clarity, Lisa sensed something surprising. Perhaps their inability to understand each other completely wasn't a failure of their love, but the very condition in which authentic love could flourish.

Because if they could possess each other completely, if every mystery were solved, every depth sounded, every deep illuminated—what would be left to love? True love isn't possession, but worship of the sacred mystery that the other always remains.

Like God loves us—not because He understands us (He understands us all too well), but despite our impenetrability to ourselves. As Paul writes: "For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known" (1 Corinthians 13:12, NIV). Like we are called to love Him—not because we understand Him, but precisely because He remains infinitely beyond our comprehension.

"Maybe," she thought as dawn began to filter through the blinds, "maybe the real miracle isn't being completely understood, but being loved precisely in that part of us that will forever remain mysterious—just as God loves us in our inscrutable complexity."

And perhaps this was the beginning not of the end of their love, but of its transfiguration—from an impossible attempt at fusion to a respectful dance with the sacred mystery that the other always remains.

Prayer for Today

Lord, help us to love like You love—not demanding complete understanding, but offering complete presence. Teach us to see the mystery in our spouse, our children, our friends not as a barrier to overcome, but as a sacred space to honor. When we feel the loneliness of being misunderstood, remind us that You too experienced this on earth, and that Your love for us doesn't depend on our clarity, but on Your faithfulness. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Reflection Questions

1. When have you felt most misunderstood by someone you love? How might viewing this as a shared human condition rather than a personal failure change your perspective?
2. What would it look like to love someone without needing to "figure them out" completely? How does this mirror God's love for us?
3. In what ways might the "curse of Babel"—our tendency to mean different things with the same words—actually be an invitation to deeper, more patient love?