Love is a verb, not a noun. I mention this on my blog many times.
When you tell someone you love them….those words can be soothing and reassuring, but this generally comes after this love has manifested itself via actions or behavior in some way. Otherwise, the words by themselves (can) mean very little.
Loving someone and expressing love are not the same thing. The feeling and the action are not the same.You can love a plant unconditionally, but if you don’t water it, the plant will die.
Many people are looking for “chemistry” in their love lives. They want someone who stirs up their feelings of admiration, attraction, and desire. It’s like they want to be handed a surprise gift. A neat little package containing all of the feelings we associate with love, especially the way “true love” and “love at first sight” is conveyed in the movies and songs that define our culture. Is it any surprise, then, that divorce rates are so high? Is it any surprise so many people are in serial relationships that last only months or a few years before they renew their search for “better chemistry?”
Love is not chemistry. Love is a choice.
The feelings we associate with love (admiration, desire, possessiveness, generosity, et cetera) are just that; feelings associated with love, especially when choices to love are being reciprocated and the challenges we face are relatively small. And these feelings are all good. But they are not love.
Love is decision. It is a verb. It is the process of making every day choices that honor a relationship which includes commitments of serving another persons, whether that be a new born child you barely know, a parent you’ve known all your life, or your fiance’ on your wedding day.
It is the every day decisions to make little or big choices to honor this desire and decision to love that shapes us into loving persons. Consistently choosing to love makes us better people. Every choice to love reinforces one or more virtues which become the habits which shape our character.
Put another way, love is what we choose to give to others in the process of being the best persons we can be.
Love is a choice, not a feeling. Feelings come and go, and if we choose to base our most important relationships on how we feel at any particular moment, we are in for a rough and rocky journey.
Love is verb, not a noun. Love is something we do, not something that happens to us.
Love is a verb. Love–the feeling–is a fruit of love, the verb. So love him Serve him. Sacrifice. Listen to him. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm him Are you willing to do that?
Our modern culture equates intimacy with sex and proclaims love is a feeling. On both counts we are being massively deceived, sex is only the shadow of intimacy; feelings are just the aroma of the flower we call love . . . and flowers are not always in bloom.
You can only choose to love. you cannot determine whether someone else will love you. But if in every situation you choose to love, nothing and no one can diminish you. Others may choose not to love you in return, but that doesn’t diminish you. Their failure to love is their failure alone and diminishes only themselves.
Love is a constant gesture. It is a million “I love you” text messages, phone calls to show you care, warm embraces, tender hugs and kisses, dates, smiles, and winks. Love is finding a compromise where no one wins 100%, but it’s something everyone can live with. Love is washing work shirts for your partner because they are pinned between the late shift and the morning shift. Love looks like managing the budget because your partner isn’t always so good at that sort of thing. Love means proofreading a million college papers, and working a crappy full-time job at a hardware store so that your
“Love is a verb.” And for those of you with children, you know what this looks like. You know how much love there is in staying up with a sick, feverish, child, or hunching next to squirmy grade-schooler, helping with homework, feeling tired and frustrated after a long day.he reality is that real, long-term love isn’t drug-like or euphoric. It’s practical, sacrificial, and passionate. It’s intentional. It’s about action and compromise. And most importantly, it means reaching deep inside yourself, and realizing that sometimes you don’t always love the person that you are with.
It isn’t easy, but neither is marriage.