True Love

Today is Valentine’s Day, and everywhere you look you see representations of love:  a dozen red roses, decadent chocolates, juicy strawberries, fancy cards, movies where true love wins out in the end, heart-shaped food that’s been colored red, dreamy couples gazing into each other’s eyes, giddy people holding hands and running through fields barefoot, dogs with sparkly red collars.

Everywhere you look today you’ll see things that someone, somewhere decided represent love.

But what is love, really?  The kind of love we all want?  Real Love?

Love that lasts is more than a feeling.  The ooey-gooey feeling is great; don’t get me wrong.  Wouldn’t it be great if that giddy happiness could always be there to make things easier?

We love that feeling.

Lots of folks move from one relationship to another to another, because they think that if they don’t “feel” love anymore it means there’s something wrong with the relationship.

But feelings come and go.  And love that lasts will be there even when the butterflies in your tummy are resting.

For many of us, we stood before our friends and family and Real Love promised, “I will, I do, in good times and bad, in sickness and health, until one of us stops being alive.”  On that day we were full of hope and felt like we could conquer anything that tried to topple us.

And then when the sickness comes, or the hard times, or the differences that started out as quirky cute things and grew into canyons that we can’t even see past anymore – when those things come (because they will), Real Love stays and goes through it with the person those promises were made to.

I’m not writing this to make anyone feel guilty.  Many of you reading this have experienced divorce.  Either because you wanted it or because it was forced on you.  I’m sorry that relationships so often break down and die.  In a perfect world, this wouldn’t happen.

But we don’t live in a perfect world.

There are times when divorce is necessary, unavoidable.  That’s a sad reality of the world we live in.

What has me concerned is that we, as a culture, frequently give up too soon because we can’t stand feeling unhappy or frustrated or stressed.  We feel entitled to our storybook expectations of love.  We have no tolerance for uncomfortable emotions.  We live in an immediate gratification world, and when our marriage isn’t everything we dreamed it would be, we have little patience for sticking it out and working on it.

We think that Real Love will find us, if we just find the right person.

When in reality, you will find Real Love if you ARE the right person.  We spend too much time trying to find our True Love, instead in trying to love the way God intended us to love.

“Love one another deeply, from the heart.”  1 Peter 1:22

“Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.”    Proverbs 3:3

Most of us aren’t born with the ability to love like God intended us to love.  We are too selfish, too focused on what we can get rather than on what we can give.  To love that other person when they aren’t very likeable at the moment.  Or when you aren’t feeling that great and feel your patience running out.  When you’re TIRED and become resentful that they are breathing in YOUR AIR.

Real Love takes discipline.  It IS a discipline. We have to work at it.

Real Love is a giving, unselfish love.  It’s a serving love where you want to do what you can to make that other person’s life better, with no strings attached.  Without resentment.  Real Love is balancing the other person’s needs with your own, and working together to find the best solution for both of you.  Real love seeks win-win solutions.

Real love is an honest love.  If you are not being honest and trustworthy – in both small and large things – you are not giving Real Love to your mate.  Lying and being inauthentic dishonors both you and the one you love.

Real love is a loyal love.  Real Love will stand up for you, speak well about you, always have your back.  You are that person’s top priority.  If you are loving properly, your partner won’t have to question whether you are committed to them or not.

Real Love listens and seeks to understand.  Real Love will make sure you each understand the other’s thoughts and feelings before trying to solve a contentious problem.  It will be more concerned about the health of the relationship than winning an argument.

Real Love can choose to let the other person be “right”, even when they aren’t.  You know what I mean.  Your spouse says the Smiths came over on Tuesday, and you know good and well it was Wednesday.  You have two choices – you can stand your ground and not back down on the fact that you are right (it was Wednesday), or you can decide that in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter what day it was.  After studying how memory works, let me tell you that the process of remembering is a whole lot more complex than we realize!  Your spouse isn’t stupid or stubborn for saying the Smiths came over on Tuesday when it was really Wednesday.  That’s just how s/he remembers it.  It’s ok.  Having a peaceful relationship wins out over being “right” if Real Love is there.

Relationships are much easier when things are going well and you’re being nice to each other and you are filled with happy, loving feelings about your partner.  But Real Love is there, too, when things are not going well, and one or both of you are grumpy and short-tempered, and you don’t much like that person right now.  Real Love knows that no emotion, no circumstance lasts forever.  Real Love weathers the storm with as much understanding and compassion as possible.  Even if the storm lasts a long time.

Sometimes a relationship hangs on by the thinnest of threads.  The only reason you’re still there is because you promised to be there in good times and bad.  And it’s bad right now…

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him,”   Romans 8:28

Don’t forget that God can make good out of bad, if you continue to seek Him.  I have seen this happen so often with marriages that are struggling, if both people will hang in there and not bail when it gets rough.  Couples can come out stronger, closer, more in love no matter what the challenge – infidelity, dishonesty, health problems, job loss, financial strain – if they are both committed to staying put and working through it.

I’ve got a “God List”.  This is a list of questions that I want to ask God someday when I finally see Him.  Stuff like, how can He have ALWAYS BEEN?  How can anything not ever have had a beginning?  My brain can’t wrap around that.  Another question on my God List has to do with why he made men and women so very different, then put us together and told us not to leave.  I think He must be up there having a good laugh watching us work that one out!

Sometimes Real Love stays married for no reason other than because we said we would.  We wonder if that’s a good enough reason.  I think that most of the time, it is.

Real Love continually looks for ways to make the relationship work, by trying to understand the other person and work through issues together.  When both people do this, it works.  Sometimes one person refuses to engage in the process, but even if you are the only one willing to work on it, the relationship can improve.

Real Love is something that only develops over time.  You don’t really know what kind of Love you have until it is tested.

Want to know how to stay married?  Don’t get divorced.  Decide to gut it out during those hard times – because if you are married long enough, you will have hard times.  And the reward, the deep, meaningful, soul-catching sort of love happens when you come out on the other side of the hard times.

How long does it take for things to get better?  Usually a lot longer than we want it to take.  God’s timetable tends to be way different than ours.  And that’s the hard part, because we basically want things to get better NOW…

Please resist the temptation to look at this in black and white terms and think I’m saying that there is never any reason to break a marriage.  I’m not saying that all.  There are reasons to leave a marriage.

This post isn’t focusing on all the “what if’s”.  You know what they are:  what if the other person is abusive?  What if the other person isn’t willing to try?  I’m just not happy, and doesn’t God want me to be happy?   Those are topics for another post at another time.

The purpose of this post is to challenge you to think about Real Love is.   And honestly ask yourself if you are loving with Real Love.

Real love isn’t for sissies.  It takes courage and commitment and sacrifice and overcoming your own shortcomings.   But it’s also fun, exciting, satisfying, and fulfilling.  Real Love is not something you chase after.  It’s something you build.

If Valentine’s Day isn’t a happy occasion for you, because your own relationship is not in a good place, and seeing the frenzy of Happy! Young! Thin! Energetic! Love! everywhere you look is sort of discouraging – don’t lose hope.  Any relationship can improve and be saved if the people involved in the relationship want things to get better.  There is no relationship that is too far gone to save if the people involved want to save it.

There is no better definition of Real Love than this one out of 1 Corinthians chapter 13, out of the New Living Translation.  Read it like you’ve never seen it before:

Love is patient and kind.

Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude.

It does not demand its own way.

It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.

It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.

Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7, 10