By Greg Hoover

This essay provides a soulful roadmap of spiritual growth through the stages of Conditional Love, Unrequited Love, and Uncontrolling Love—guiding us from fear to freedom, from certainty to wonder, into the heart of God.

Before I was ordained to the Episcopal priesthood, I spent nearly a decade working for a non-profit mental health agency, offering free psychological services across twenty-four rural counties. Our motto was simple: “help people where they are.” And we meant it. I met people in schools, jails, churches, psychiatric hospitals, backyards, and once, in the cab of an old pickup truck parked on the shoulder of a gravel road.

Working with people in crisis taught me that healing is never just about better thinking or better behavior—it’s about the soul. While psychology—thanks to thinkers like Erikson and Piaget—taught me how minds evolve, it was the lives of the people I served that taught me something deeper: our souls grow too. And spiritual growth unfolds not randomly, but in stages.

Just as the body matures and the mind expands, so too does our understanding of the Sacred. We grow in how we love, how we trust, and how we see God. Understanding the soul’s development helps us recognize where we are—and where we may be stuck. Over the years, I’ve come to see three recurring movements in the spiritual life: Conditional Love, Unrequited Love, and Uncontrolling Love.

Stage One: Conditional Love

In the beginning, most people experience God as the Great Rewarder. Blessings are earned. Prayers are answered if you get it right. Love is given, but with strings attached.

At this stage, faith is often rigid but comforting. God is in control. Life has clear rules. The Bible is read like a legal contract. Miracles prove favor, and suffering suggests failure. Faith is a fortress—and it has gates.

I met a woman named Ruth who had found Jesus in jail. She clutched a Bible with broken binding and said, “I hit rock bottom. But when I gave my life to God, He turned it all around. That’s how I know He’s real.” Her testimony was sincere and powerful. But when her daughter relapsed and went back to prison, Ruth was devastated—and not just by the loss, but by the question: “What did I do wrong?”

In the stage of Conditional Love, people may believe they are loved only when they behave a certain way. This understanding often leads to anxiety masked as devotion. There’s always the fear that you might lose God’s favor.

But eventually, life challenges this belief. The healing doesn’t come. The prayer goes unanswered. Or the person you trusted most lets you down. The pain of these moments isn’t just emotional—it’s theological. And it becomes the doorway to the next stage.

Stage Two: Unrequited Love

At this stage, we begin to question everything. We feel like we’ve been loving God, but God hasn’t returned the call. The tidy theology we once embraced doesn’t account for what we’ve been through. We still believe in love—but the love feels one-sided.

This stage is often sparked by loss, disillusionment, or education. You read the Bible differently. You hear a sermon and feel yourself pulling back. You say things like, “If God is all-powerful and loving, why did this happen?”

I once met a seminarian named Isaac. “I came here on fire for ministry,” he told me. “But the more I studied theology and history, the more I felt like the faith I grew up with was a house of cards. Now I don’t know what to believe.” His heart hadn’t grown cold—it had grown honest.

In the Unrequited Love stage, many people leave the church. Or they stay, but feel like spiritual imposters. They long for a love that feels mutual, but instead feel abandoned by the very God they once trusted.

But here’s the truth hidden inside this stage: your longing itself is sacred. Your love is real. And even though you may not feel it now, you are not loving in vain.

Stage Three: Uncontrolling Love

In the third stage, something beautiful happens—not always quickly, and never easily. But the soul, having passed through certainty and disillusionment, begins to awaken to a new kind of love.

We come to see that God’s love was never absent—but it was never manipulative, either. God’s love is uncontrolling. Not because God is indifferent or weak, but because real love refuses to override freedom. Real love never coerces.

I think of Henry, a parishioner who lost his wife after years of praying for a miracle. He nearly walked away from God. “What kind of God lets this happen?” he’d asked me. But a year after her passing, he said quietly, “I still don’t understand. But I don’t feel alone anymore. I think love held us the whole time. I just couldn’t see it then.”

Uncontrolling Love is not the love of a puppeteer or a judge—it’s the love of a faithful presence. It joins us in our joy and sorrow, always working for good, but never forcing it. This love invites but does not impose. It influences, but never dominates.

We begin to pray again—not to get God to do something, but to become more open to the love that’s already present. We read scripture not as a rulebook, but as a conversation. We find peace—not from answers, but from presence.

And perhaps most beautifully, we begin to love others as we have been loved: not by control, but by compassion. We trust that even our small acts of kindness are caught up in a greater stream of divine love moving through the world.

Final Thoughts

We don’t move through these stages in a neat, linear path. On Monday we might feel full of uncontrolling love, and by Friday we’re back demanding proof again. That’s human. That’s sacred, too.

But naming these stages—Conditional Love, Unrequited Love, and Uncontrolling Love—gives us a map for the soul’s journey. And while a map doesn’t eliminate the valleys, it can remind us that the valleys have their place. They are not detours. They are part of the road.

To grow spiritually is not to never doubt. It is to love anyway. It is to trust that even in silence, even in struggle, love is still real—and it is still working.

As a wise mystic once said, “The day will come when, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”

May that fire—free, unforced, and fiercely faithful—continue to burn in us all.