Love. It’s a word, right?
It’s an interesting word, and we seem to use it all the time, but what is it? Kendra Cherry, on the website Verywellmind, said this: “Love is a set of emotions and behaviors characterized by intimacy, passion, and commitment. It involves care, closeness, protectiveness, attraction, affection, and trust.”
(Link – https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-love-2795343 )
She said a number of other things about love, but it’s these that catch my attention. Is this really the way we use the word “love”?
I’m guessing that all of us use the word in very different ways.
“I love cool fall mornings.”
“I love pumpkin pie.”
“I love baseball.”
Do we talk like this? Of course we do. We throw the word around so casually that it has become little more than a verbal shortcut for “I enjoy this” or “I like that.” We use it to describe the weather, a favorite meal, a television show, or a comfortable chair. Our casual use has taken away the true sense of the word.
But think about it for a moment.
Do I really love pumpkin pie?
Do I really love mashed potatoes and gravy?
Do I really love a cool autumn morning?
Not in the sense that Kendra Cherry describes. Not in the sense that the word deserves.
That word, that truth, can only come from a God who is “LOVE.” The very essence of it has been formed in us by the Creator who loves us with a passion that we can barely grasp.
Somewhere along the way, we have taken one of the most powerful words in the human vocabulary and reduced it to a convenient expression for preference. We use it so often and so casually that we seldom stop to consider its weight. Love has become common, ordinary, almost disposable.
But real love is anything but ordinary.
Go back and read that definition Kendra Cherry offered again. Forget everything else she wrote and focus on those few words: intimacy, passion, commitment, care, closeness, protectiveness, affection, and trust.
Now we’re talking about something entirely different.
I love my wife.
I don’t love pumpkin pie.
I don’t love mashed potatoes and gravy.
I don’t love a baseball game.
I may enjoy those things. I may even enjoy them immensely. But I love my wife.
There is a world of difference.
When I say I love my wife, I mean that my life has become intertwined with hers. We two have become one. Our joys have become shared joys. Our sorrows have become shared sorrows. Our victories and defeats belong to both of us. We have walked through years together, carrying burdens, celebrating milestones, enduring disappointments, and discovering blessings neither of us could have imagined when we first began, and neither of us could have found true enjoyment in them were it not for the other..
Love is not merely an emotion.
It is not simply attraction.
It is not a warm feeling that comes and goes with the circumstances.
Love is the deliberate intertwining of one life with another.
If she were to pass before I do, my heart would be ripped out of my chest and buried with her. We are one, and her absence would leave a wound that could never fully heal. Part of me would still be here, breathing and walking and carrying on, but another part would be gone.
Bebo Norman expresses this beautifully in his song, “All That I Have Sown,” that begins:
“I believe when they put her in the ground
I think they buried part of me
Cause I’ve been searching
I’ve been looking all around
But I cannot find the heart of me”
(Here’s a link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTTGesBCB8s )
I know, from talking to many who have lost a spouse, that this is how you, they feel. That’s because love wasn’t just a descriptive word for everyday things; “I love banana bread.”
No. Love was/is a life wrapped in the soul of another. And it made life worthwhile.
Love. I want to use that word correctly.