Recently a situation in my life called for some research in the ways of learning how to love. We all know what love is... or do we? I've found myself asking this question lately. There are many different types of love. There are simple, complicated and many false perceptions about what love truly is. The struggle to understand this had been on my heart for a few years and the journey of trying to understand love started a while ago. The main reason is because I found myself longing for something that I now believe to be unrealistic and untrue. I had always longed for the love, and the feeling of love that you see in movies. I have learned that the love I always wanted, the feeling of "being in love" was something that I completely misunderstood. The love I longed for was immature and not real love at all. Loving seems like such a simple concept, yet most people, at least once during their life, find it to be one of the hardest things to do. So what is this love that I have discovered?
Yesterday I was reading some articles on Focus on the Family's website called Boundless, and I came across some very helpful articles on the topic.
The first article I read is titled The rules of Romance(1). Yesterday I was trying to explain to my boyfriend what it is that makes me feel loved. I had a really hard time explaining that to him, not because it is difficult to talk to him, but because I hadn't really thought about it before. Before reading this article, The rules of Romance, I didn't realize how much of a role romance actually plays into women feeling loved. The whole article is about romance and how to be romantic. Some of the suggestions that it gave are a little over the top but some are really good. I always hear people say that it's the little things that make them happy, well the same idea goes for love. The main gist of what the article was emphasizing is that it's the little things, the thoughtfulness and the selflessness that matter when it comes to showing love. I think the article summed it up best in this quote:
"Being romantic, or showing love, is not about your own convenience. It's not about what you want to do. It's about making someone else feel like the most important person in the world. It's about love — whether that's a word you use with each other or not — because that's what love does. Love takes risks. Love doesn't settle for mediocrity. Love goes out of its way to put the other person first."
This sounds a lot like what the Bible has to say about love. When we look to 1 Corinthians 13 we see that this is how true love is described:
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails."
One topic that came up many times between me and my girlfriends is the topic of settling in relationship. Growing up we were all told to never settle in a relationship if the man you are with is not everything that you want. I'm know, sounds ridiculous right? But for the longest time that's what I believed and also why I didn't want to date very many people. Since reading this article titled Settling(2) a while ago, I have a completely different view on the whole idea. I think most of the article is very good but what I got out of it that pertains to learning to love is this:
"In Scripture, love is described not as a mere emotion based on personal desire (i.e., "attraction"), but as an act of the will that leads to selfless actions toward others. According to Jesus Himself, the second-greatest commandment (after loving God) is to "love your neighbor as yourself" (Mark 12:31). He also said "greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). Jesus' love for us did not result from our inherent loveliness or our wonderful treatment of Him. He didn't go to the cross as a spontaneous response triggered by mere emotion. His perfect love of us was a choice, an act undertaken despite our lack of attractiveness — and it led to both sacrifice and joy."
One more article I came across while doing this looove research is titled Stop Test Driving Your Girlfriend(3). It had some really good things to say about beauty and about how love isn't easy. Those that have ever loved or been loved understand how true that statement is. Right now I am in the midst of relearning this, and let me tell you that that statement could not be truer.
I really wanted to include this part about beauty because feeling and knowing that I am beautiful is very important to me and I want to be loved for my "true beauty," as the article puts it. Every girl, even if she denies it, longs to feel truly beautiful more than anything. Here's what the article says:
"The Scriptures call us to develop an attraction to true beauty. 1 Peter 3:3-6 describes the beautiful wife as a woman who has a gentle and quiet spirit, born out of her faith and hope in God, and displayed in her trusting submission to her husband. Men, is the presence of this kind of beauty the driving force for your sense of attraction to your girlfriend? Or have you made romantic attraction and "chemistry" the deciding issue?
Now don't get me wrong. You should be physically attracted to the woman you marry. This is one of the ways marriage serves as a protection against sexual immorality (1 Cor. 7:3-5). But we get in trouble, both in dating and in marriage, when we make physical beauty and "chemistry" the threshold issue in the decision to commit.
Physical beauty in a fallen world is fading and transient. What's more, the world narrowly defines beauty as the body of a teenager, and scorns the beauty of motherhood and maturity. But in which "body" is your wife going to spend most of her years with you? Personalities also change and mature, and what seems like "chemistry" when you're 22 might feel like superficial immaturity 10 years later. Even over the course of a long courtship and engagement in the prime of your youth, physical attraction and chemistry are sure to go through ups and downs. We must resist the temptation to value the wrong kind of beauty.
No one lives in a perpetual state of "being in love." But our love is called to "always protect, always trust, always hope, always persevere" (1 Cor. 13:7). If mere worldly, physical beauty is the main thing attracting our love, then our love will prove as ephemeral as that beauty. But if we have developed an attraction to true beauty, then we have nothing to fear."
So what is love and how do we love? I think, through my mini research project, I've found the understanding that I was looking for. Although I still have many lessons to learn concerning the self-sacrificial virtue of loving and being loved, I think I have a good start :)
Articles from Boundless Webzine:
(1) http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001969.cfm
(2) http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001784.cfm
(3)http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001306.cfm
