This blog was so graciously written by a long time friend of Katelyn’s Fund, Becky Bilby.

One of the toughest things I have been called to do is love someone who does not love me back…..or at least someone who does not show they love me in any verbal or outward form. We are so used to hearing “thank you” at the very least when we do something for someone –but in this relationship – those words are not spoken either. I give, and give, and give and I am rewarded with nothing. I am finding I don’t know how to love people who do not love me. I haven’t had the opportunity to grow this throughout my life. It’s foreign to me. I have done much reading on this topic and this is what is helping me. C. S. Lewis mentioned it in his book, Mere Christianity. “The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did.”
“Instead of waiting for your inner affections to muster the appropriate love for someone, ask the Lewisian question: What would I do, if I did have appropriate feelings towards them? Would I get off the couch and apologize to my wife? Would I call my family member I haven’t spoken to for years? Would I ask my neighbor over for dinner?
Use your God-given imagination to picture what loving looks like, and then do it. And pray as you act.”
It is the act of asking God to enlarge our heart to make us more like Him and then choosing to act as if we feel it. I pray daily God will give me genuine, authentic love for this person and that, in the meantime, I will be able to show love to them as if our relationship were functioning normally. I believe God will change this relationship and so I live and love with this expectation. As one author puts it, “Love is a gift from God often given when we act before we feel.”
“At the end of the day, we fake it until he makes it because, ultimately, he already has. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). We do not fake being what we are not; we put on what we already are when we feel least like it (Colossians 3:1–17).”
Praise God He is the author of love and relationships. Praise God He can redeem a broken relationship. Praise God He gives us the grace to do it.

Quotes taken from Greg Morse article https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/how-to-love-when-
you-dont-feel-it. February 16, 2017