Love Is...

I admit it.  I am that person who cries at love stories and weddings.  I guess the idea that “love conquers all” makes me a hopeless romantic.  However, I know better than to buy into the cultural delusion that love is a feeling and when the fire starts to wane then love must be gone.  Love to me is so much more.

Love is commitment.  It means making the relationship work even when you’d rather pack it in and go home to momma.  It means enduring the hard times, making the hard choices and learning to forgive.  I’ve been blessed with a husband who treats me like a princess, but that doesn’t mean the last 28 years have been free of problems.  We have different personalities, different likes and dislikes and sometimes different views on how to handle situations.  There have been a number of times we’ve both wanted to walk away, but our commitment to each other and our Lord has made us do the hard work to stay the course.  In my line of work as an elder care coordinator I see lots of families in crisis situations as they deal with the failing health of an older adult.  Nothing defines love to me like an 89 year old client committed to caring for his 92 year old bed-ridden wife of 70 years.

Love is vulnerable.  As we open our heart to another we are susceptible to being wounded.  Those we love the deepest have the potential to hurt us the most.  One of the most difficult things about love is that it may not always be received or reciprocated in the way we want.  Because we are human our love isn’t pure.  We unknowingly attach stipulations to it.  Love requires accepting the person as they are and allowing them to respond as they may.  Love cannot be forced.

Love is enduring.  I think a mother’s love is a perfect example.  When a mother holds their child for the first time they think they couldn’t possibly love them anymore than they do at that moment, but amazingly, that love deepens and develops in an almost unexplainable way.  Though our child may no longer be physically connected to us in the womb by an umbilical cord our emotional connection to them is never cut.  Nothing tugs a mother’s heart strings more than love for her children.

Love is selfless.  It is valuing the one you love and putting their needs above your own.  (Philippians 2:3-4).  Sometimes relationships require more giving than taking, but when you love that person you believe it is a win-win situation.  Selfless love has far reaching effects.  Some friends of mine have just given up their vacations to extend Christ’s love to the homeless in Haiti and to orphans in Russia. 

Love is sacrifice.  It is the willingness to lay down your life for another.  We have seen that sacrifice made by our brothers and sisters in the military and we have seen it by countless others who put themselves in harms way to protect those they love.  But the greatest love I have ever known comes from the One who made the ultimate sacrifice for me.  “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)  Because of sin we are separated from a holy God.  All God has ever desired is a love relationship with us.  He loved us enough to sacrifice his son to pay the price for our sins and provide a means for us to once again connect with him.  The only requirement is we must each personally accept what Christ did for us.  We may not think we are worth that depth of love, but God says we are. 

Love flows from a grateful heart.  The more I grasp God’s great love for me the more I want to share it with others.   Love is meant to be given away.