Love is patient, love is kind.
Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not conceited,
does not act improperly, is not selfish, is not provoked,
and does not keep a record of wrongs.
Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends.

Now many of us cannot honestly say we are perfect at this love thing. Strong affection though, when it is truly love, should be a model of Jesus to the object of love. That’s why a man and a woman, two distinct individuals from different backgrounds, jobs, temperaments, giftedness, traumas, successes, growth in faith, preferences…. you get the drift — will commit to loving their spouse for a lifetime. While love may be an emotion and can be directed at a spouse, a child, a friend, other family members, or in some cases even food or a movie…it involves action. Sometimes in spite of emotion.

A quick note about romance and love in fiction. I write romance. As a genre the requirement is a happily-ever-after ending. I am aware that life is full of challenges but when writing that kind of story the goal is to leave people with a happy feeling. Other authors, Nicolas Sparks for instance, since many know his work, doesn’t write romance. He writes love stories which inevitably involve loss and tears at some point. Granted, true life is filled with highs and lows…as far as fiction goes, it is where you end the story.

So what do we have with Jesus? We have the happily-ever-after, although if the story had ended at the crucifixion – it would have only been a love story of epic proportions. We get the happily-ever-after ending with Him in heaven regardless of how we depart this planet. Unless you reject Jesus, then your story ends in tragedy.

Love is hard. When one loves deeply, one grieves deeply. Love is also involved in attachment so it makes sense that one can love a dog, or a home, or a great book. We have a fondness, tenderness, and warmth toward something. We had a senior dog, Benji, who was with us for only eighteen months but he had issues we weren’t aware of when we adopted him that included: dementia, incontinence in the house, focal seizures, and an uninhibited bite response. He was so cute, soft, affectionate,and devoted to me. He was difficult to care for and make sure he didn’t bite anyone. When he unexpectedly bit me, that was the limit. A dog that bites is a liability. We had to be put him down. Part of me was relieved because he was such a pain in the neck in many ways, in spite of that sweet face and devotion. When we put him down, I was stoic, but later, I bawled. I kept looking for him everywhere. I loved him. I was patient, kind, and I bore with his idiosyncracies that come with adopting an old dog. I had invested in him and he had no idea that he even bit me or that it was wrong to do so. He sat there wagging his tail waiting for attention. Even writing this, years later, makes me want to cry and we’ve had to say good-bye to three other senior dogs since that time. Thinking about any of them will make me miss them and sad that we had to make that decision.

This is even harder with a person who is ailing. Dementia, birth defects, trajedies can change our lives and the emotion of love is not longer in control. Yes, we feel affection but it can be at war with despair, depression, and physical fatigue. Yet those who truly love, care for that person regardles of those issues, even when it is hard, hurts, and creates a burden or inconvenience.

See how complicated love is? True love lasts beyond the emotion. Sometimes acting loving can help us get back there to the feeling.

Both my husband and I came from verbally abusive first marriages and it left us wondering how well we could love another person after all of that. We obviously had the affection part down but we were old enough to know that emotions are fickle. “Do I even know how to love?” he asked me a few times. Yes, he does. He shows it to me not only in words but deeds. He provides a secure home for me, he treats me kindly, sometimes buys flowers for me “just because.” He cares about what concerns me.  He’s the one who graciously has agreed to adopt those old dogs even though their deaths wounded our souls deeply. Now we have younger dogs so hopefully we don’t have to make those kinds of decisions for a long time.

So how could love be dangerous? It can be dangerous if we are loving someone who is abusive and refuses to get help, or change. People with certain mental illnesses need love (don’t we all?) but would never make a good partner due to their illness. Love needs boundaries because we should have some affection for ourselves as well.

Boundaries are why we train our children not to run into the road without looking both ways among many other lessons. Love encourages the best of someone else but that does not mean approving or accepting abuse or sin. We will get angry with anyone we have a long term relationship with, however, it isn’t abuse if there is honest sharing of emotions. It is abuse when there is belittling, name-calling, contempt, bitterness, and put-downs.

Love without boundaries is dangerous and not really love. We should never blankly accept the terrible things someone might try to do to us. When my dad was on hospice, struggling mentally after having an extremely rare brain tumor removed, he could at times be mean. It had to be frustrating to him to not understand all that was happening or even recognize the people trying to care for him, even if they were his children. One day he got a bit snippy with my mom and she told him he needed to behave. He never acted out that way again. If he gave me any trouble, I would tell him mom would be angry and he’d comply with the plan. Once in a moment of clarity toward the end, he even thanked my mom for taking good care of him.

I love my dad and writing that made me cry. That’s love. I still have deep affection for a man who no longer walks on this earth. I admire the love my mom showed him by her actions even when it was a huge sacrifice.

Love as an emotion is dangerous when someone decides they no longer love someone anymore because they don’t feel that way. We can’t always let emotions be the litmus test for a relationship. I had a difficult time with two of my three kids as they grew up, and I still loved them during that time when they were not very loveable. Babies are cute and snuggly and easy to love, but some parents have to love one who cries all night and day, or won’t sleep, or has serious medical issues that sap every ounce of life from them. Love can and should prevail because it is almost as close to life as anything else during those times.

I’ve rambled here and it’s tugged my heartstrings so I suppose next week I’ll talk about grief.

Something else to think about though. God loves us and created you and me. Even when we wouldn’t acknowledge Him, Jesus died on the cross to bridge the gap of sin that seperated us from a holy and perfect LORD. “For God so loved the world…” I’m reading in the Old Testament right now and God’s longsuffering toward the nation of Israel is amazing to behold. He loved them even when He needed to allow, or force, negative consequences for their sins. God loved with boundaries, but His devotion never failed because LOVE never ends.

1 John 14 states: We love because He first loved us. When we are connected to the ultimate source of love, it becomes easier to love others.

The dangerous emotion of love is a deep subject and I’ve only scratched the surface. Remember that God’s love is better than any human love and should be the ONE we seek to love first before anyone or anything else. That’s hard for us fickle emotional humans to do.