loving the unlovely

I watched fire proof while I was home for spring break. I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT! I didn't really think much about how I could apply it to my life (since I'm not married) until I came back to school. I was thinking about the part of the movie where Kirk Cameron is telling his dad that his wife just keeps rejecting him after all he's done for her and she just spits in his face and treats him like dirt. He says "How can you love someone who treats you like that?" His dad makes his point about how God loves us even when we spit in His face after all He's done for us.
This puts things in a different light. I get so angry sometimes at a friend who ignores me for someone she thinks is more important right now. What's even more irritating, I think, is the fact that she keeps saying that she loves me and that we are best friends but she won't treat me like her best friend. In fact we are very distant. It would be different if she would just admit that right now, this other person is more important to her and she doesn't care about my opinions or spending time with me. It may hurt my feelings but at least I wouldn't feel hurt and lied to.
Now, here's what I've noticed... This scenario could easily depict my walk with Christ. I ignore Him so often for someone or something else that, in my mind is more important. On top of that, I still tell everyone, and tell Him, that I still love Him and want to spend time with Him. But in reality, often times I am distant from Him and really don't act like I care what He thinks or that spending time with Him is valuable to me at all. Now, how can I rightfully be so angry at someone doing that to me... I do the same thing to the Almighty God who loves me beyond measure.
And another thing- Even after Kirk Cameron starts really trying to save his marriage and doing all these sweet things to show his wife he cares, she is still mean to him. Does that stop him? No. He just keeps giving and loving. I believe that this is because he realized what kind of love he had been loved with (by Christ) and that placed on him a burden to love his wife the same way. We should be trying to love others with the same love that Christ gives us.
This is something that I think is going to take me a long time to fully grasp and practice consistently but it's helped me tonight, specifically. Hope it has made someone think about how they have been loving others.
"You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving"
"If I cannot in honest happiness take the second place (or the 20th), then I know nothing of Calvary's love... If I am perturbed by the reproach and misunderstanding that may follow action taken for the good of souls for whom I must give account; if I cannot commit the matter and go on in peace and in silence, remembering Gethsemane and the cross, then I know nothing of Calvary's love..." Amy Carmichael