Love is a Practice

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With it being the week of Valentines Day I thought love would be a good topic. Love is a word we hear a lot and we feel thankfully, but what is love really? I looked up a few definitions and this is what I found.

Love is defined as:

  • An intense feeling of deep affection
  • A deep romantic or sexual attachment to someone
  • A personified figure of love, often represented as Cupid. (How appropriate for Valentines day!)
  • A person or thing that one loves. (Not at all helpful)

And from the Urban Dictionary:

  • Love is giving someone the power to destroy you, and trusting them not to.
  • Love is either a horrible disease or a blessing.
  • Love is nature’s way of tricking people into reproducing. (sorry had to add that because it made me laugh out loud!)
  • Love is when your dog licks your face, when you come home, even though you’ve left them alone all day.
  • Love is giving them the last piece of cake, no matter how much you want it.
  • Love is that tingly feeling you get and you don’t know why.
  • Love is commitment.

I personally agree with these definitions as at least a partial explanation of love, with the exception of it being trickery to reproduce that is! What I’m absolutely sure of and you probably are too, is that love is a feeling, but it is much more than just a feeling.

I picked up my business cards and brochures today (Sprites INK in Clarksburg MD) and on my business cards I have the phrase “Love beyond words”. In a nutshell I believe this is what Brene Brown is talking about when she uses the phrase “practice love”. She talks about the fact that when she is tired or stressed out she can be mean and blaming especially towards her husband. But in the interest of practicing love she says this, “If I truly love Steve (and, oh man, I do), then how I behave every day is as important, if not more important, than saying ‘I love you’ every day.”

Words have a lot of power. In fact Proverbs 15:4 says, “Gentle words are a tree of life; a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.” We’ve all heard that sticks and stones may break our bones but words will never hurt right? What a lie that turned out to be. It’s painful enough to be the recipient of harsh words from anyone, but when they come from someone who says they love us it is even more painful. I guess this is where love can either be a horrible disease or a blessing. The point is that speaking words without action is meaningless at best. Practicing love, is yes, that tingly feeling you get at times, but it’s also giving the one you love the last piece of cake even though you really want it. It is an intense feeling of affection but it’s also a kiss when he/she walks in after leaving you alone all day, as modeled by our fur babies. Love is a commitment to be there for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. Practicing love when he always leaves the toilet seat up, and she spends way too much money on her hair. Practicing love as we age by seeing the beauty beyond the wrinkles and weight gain, and walking through the care of aging parents together along with other inevitable hardships of life.

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As parents we must practice love with our kids not only when they are adorable babies smiling at us for the first time, but also when they keep us up for what seems like days or even weeks at a time with colic. We practice love when they bring home straight A’s and when they have the third fender bender in a month. We practice love when they make us proud and when we discover they are in the throws of addiction or are pregnant at 18.

1 Corinthians 13 says this about love:

“If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

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.

Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever!...Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.”

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Is it always easy to practice love? No, but it is so necessary because we are all imperfect human beings. When Nick and I got married we both brought baggage into our relationship just like every other marriage. I was incredibly insecure and afraid he would leave me sooner or later. As a result I didn’t always make it easy on him. He could have peaced out and decided marriage was too hard but he didn’t. We both by God’s grace agreed divorce would never be an option for us. As a result we made the choice to practice love (even before we knew the term) and I am so very grateful. We are now empty nesters and have supported each other through the good and the bad throughout our 28 years of marriage. A lot of it we learned by trial and error, but I am grateful to love him in a deeper way than the day I married him. Not because of the way he looks (although he IS very handsome), but because of the respect that has grown over the years as I’ve watched and experienced his love in word and deed not only for me, but for our kids, grandkids, my family and his as well as in the community.

Brene Brown says that through her research she has discovered that love and belonging go together. When I am accepted for who I truly am, strengths, faults and all, I am loved and have found my place of belonging. I don’t live with pressure to stay young and beautiful or always happy and cheerful. The pressure to be perfect and perform is non existent in a relationship that chooses to practice love, because we have discovered love is:

  • Patient
  • Kind
  • Not jealous
  • Not boastful
  • Not proud
  • Not rude
  • Does not demand its own way
  • Is not irritable
  • Keeps no record of wrongs
  • Is just
  • Never gives up
  • Never loses faith
  • Is always hopeful
  • Endures through all circumstances
  • Lasts forever

I’ll close with the ultimate example of practicing love found in Romans 5:6-8:

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Let’s practice love and make this world a kinder more compassionate place.