Love

Love …. I have been thinking about love a lot today. Yesterday my estranged husband told me several times that he loved me. I really struggled with an appropriate response. I found that yesterday I really could not do much other than to cry. Today it has got me thinking about what love is.

We live in a culture where we are told about the “one perfect soul mate” … the great love of our life. Everything in our culture is built around the magic of falling in love. It is all about the emotions we feel. But yet scripture gives us a very different viewpoint of what love is. In 1 Corinthians 13 we are told:

1If I speak in the tongues] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Love is not a warm fuzzy emotion. Love is a deliberate choice that we make. It is choosing to be loving … even when we do not feel like it. Gerrald’s choices & his actions are not loving. It is not love to frighten your wife into submission. It is not love to drink yourself into a stupor night after night so that you do not have to deal with life. It is not love to build up thousands of dollars of debt and walk away. It is not love to repeatedly abandon your wife. It is not love to lie, deceive and cheat.

It is a truth that sucks the breath out of my lungs. Every indication is that my husband does not love me in that way. … My husband does not love me … My husband does not love me. He has chosen to not love me. His every action and reaction to me shouts out that fact that he does not love me.

How do I wrap my mind and heart around that fact? I find that I do not want to believe it. But yet there it is. I have no choice but to find a way to face this.

I think the answer for me is found in that Corinthian passage. “These three remain; faith, hope and love”. I must have faith that God loves me, faith that God is in control and faith that God has a purpose and a plan for me. I must have hope that God will bring me through, hope that there are brighter tomorrows for me and hope that I will not always “feel” this way. I must have love. I must receive love, give love and be loving regardless of how I feel.

Truth is found not in who doesn’t love me, but in “Who” does love me. I am loved by God. That is enough to hold onto for tomorrow.

Just Connie