When I started dating my wife, Katie, I ached for her from my

In the quiet confession of a hunter and storyteller, Steven Rinella once said, “When I started dating my wife, Katie, I ached for her from my knees to my throat.” Though simple in form, this declaration is a living flame—a hymn to longing, to the deep and sacred ache that comes when the heart meets something greater than itself. For what Rinella speaks of is not mere desire, but that trembling of the soul that occurs when love awakens both the body and the spirit. His words reveal that love, when it is real, is not confined to thought or sentiment—it becomes physical, filling every corner of one’s being, until even the breath itself is bound to another’s name.

The ache that he describes is the ancient ache of humanity itself, as old as the first dawn. It is the echo of Adam searching for Eve, of the soul yearning for its counterpart in the wilderness of the world. When he says that the ache stretched “from his knees to his throat,” he speaks in the language of the body to express a truth of the spirit: that love, in its purest form, is not a passing fancy but a force that lives in the flesh. It humbles the strong and exalts the meek. It bends the warrior to his knees and steals the breath from his throat, reminding him that to love deeply is to surrender, and in surrender, to be transformed.

The ancients themselves knew of such love. Consider the tale of Hector and Andromache of Troy. On the eve of battle, when Hector knew that he would soon face death, his heart ached not for glory, but for the wife and child he would leave behind. Their meeting on the walls of Troy was no exchange of lofty speeches—it was raw, human, filled with tenderness and pain. In that moment, Hector was not the hero of legend, but a man who felt love in every sinew, every breath—a love that made his courage both harder and more heartbreaking. Like Rinella’s words, that moment reminds us that love is not soft, but fierce and consuming; it drives a man to protect, to sacrifice, to endure.

Rinella, a man of the wild, understands that nature itself teaches this lesson. The hunter sees how creatures, even in their most primal states, are bound by longing and devotion—the cry of the elk for its mate, the journey of the bird across endless miles to return to its partner. Love is not foreign to the earth; it is the pulse of all creation. When he speaks of aching, he does not speak of weakness but of aliveness—that burning awareness of connection that makes the world more vivid, more dangerous, and more beautiful.

There is also humility in Rinella’s words. In love, he admits not to mastery but to vulnerability. He does not say he desired his wife with control, but that he ached for her—an ache that overtook him, body and soul. In that surrender lies truth: love is not something we command; it is something that happens to us, like rain upon the mountain. It humbles our pride and softens the heart, teaching us that strength without tenderness is empty, and longing without grace becomes mere hunger.

But love, when it is joined with respect and reverence, becomes sacred fire. It refines the one who bears it. The ache, painful though it may seem, is the forge of devotion. It teaches patience, gentleness, endurance. To ache for another in this way is to feel one’s humanity fully—to be reminded that beneath our ambition and our armor, we are creatures meant for connection. The ache reminds us that joy and pain are not enemies, but companions, and that in the trembling between them lies the heart’s deepest truth.

So, my children of the living heart, learn from Rinella’s words: do not flee from the ache of love. Embrace it. It is the sign that you are alive, that your spirit has found something worthy of its fire. Let your love be not shallow or fleeting, but one that stirs you to your knees and tightens your throat with awe. Seek the kind of bond that humbles and elevates, that roots you to the earth even as it teaches you to reach toward heaven.

For in the end, to ache from one’s knees to one’s throat is to know what it means to live deeply—to be both wounded and made whole by love. That ache is not your undoing; it is your becoming. Cherish it, for it is the pulse of the eternal within you, the reminder that love—raw, aching, and divine—is the truest measure of the human soul.