Love is real, realities are tough.
True love is as tough as it can get
And to braze it, to enjoy it, you must
Be as determined as you can afford.
Love is not the impressions many think
Love is not like a feather many paint
And strong as it appears; attraction,
Infatuation, reaction, intuition, may be
Close, each bearing the label of love
Yet none can ever equal it. Like love
They have beginnings, feel great, even
Last a while, but unlike love, they switch;
They shrink under pressure, don’t live long:
They die where love is meant to thrive.
Love is not for dreamers, who like their
Fantasies, come and go. Love is not for
Fools who have no stand. True love
Is for the tough, who are willing to learn
To win and wean, not cling; to enjoy
The present, extend hope to the future.
Love is for the wise who are not afraid
Of the demands of learning, the strains
Of growth, the risks of trust, the fear
Of changes and losses and gains.
Love is not a baby, though it starts out
As one: true love is not complacent
Love is not lethargic, love is not
Stagnant, true love is not in denial.
Instead, it strives, in untiring patience,
Against all odds, towards maturity, in an
Exclusively inclusive way that fervently
Stirs peace, even in distress: love is not
Weak, true love is not for the fearful
Love is an adventure, love is risky
And love is for the brave at heart.
(Dedicated to Patti Londa Greene)

I think love is one of the most misunderstood and misused words on planet earth. Every exciting spark of emotion is quickly labeled as love and when the glimmer ebbs, we rarely find love in the dying embers of once blazing amusements. Random feelings of goodness are rapidly classified as love but as wears and tears of normal life begin to tell and feelings depreciate, we as quickly strike it off the love list and reclassify it an accident, something that shouldn’t have happened in the first place. We feel very free to tag and un-tag as we please and that has a tendency to create confusion around a virtue that is more stable than our fluctuating emotions.

As humans, our emotions can climb high and low, depending on a million and one internal and external factors, littered in varying corners of living. Yet our insecurities and inconsistencies cannot redefine love. Our deficiencies and inefficiencies cannot denature this noble virtue. People have claimed to fall in and fall out of love but love is not a hole you fall into, neither is it an edge you fall out of. Love is not what we think or make it up to be for whatever our reasons may be. Love is, what it is, whether we fall in or out. We don’t define love, love defines us.

I have gone through my personal motions that once felt like love and then the feelings fell out of place and my hurting pieces didn’t feel loved or like loving anymore. I have had experiences I assumed, projected, confirmed, and concluded as love only to redefine every feeling I felt in the processes to truly decode that love is not what I think or fell. It is so much more. And it is not easily written off. In the face of these assumptions and definitions, love has acquired a title of true and false love. That way, when our mounting assumptions eventually collapse as they often do, we accommodate it within the boundaries of something that felt like love but really wasn’t love. In that case, true love takes on the meaning that it deserves, the unchanging quality that remains steady as a rock in our rocking circumstances.

Love is not an idea. It is not a feeling. It is not imagination or rationalization. Love is a nature that can be nurtured if we are ready, and sustained if we are willing. Sometimes, our nature as humans inhibits our ability to give and receive love. We doubt and we struggle, especially if we have been bitten by snakes that came looking like love. In some instances, it becomes almost impossible to trust as suspicion writes off potentials. The truth I have learned is that love is not for the weak, the defeated, the distrustful, and the like, even though they desperately need it. Love is for the brave.

Love is for the strong. Love is for those who have loved and lost and while others are burying their hearts in a forever-never-again grave, they are daring to love again. Love is for those who have been wounded but have learned in the process of time, to surrender their wounds to the Healer, who makes all things new. Love is for those who believe in second chances. Love is for those who don’t give up and run out. Love is for those who are not afraid of the essential sacrifices of learning, who don’t scheme to avert the indispensable pressures of growth, who don’t dodge the inevitabilities of changes, who don’t romance escapism for painful realities.

Love is true and love is real. Love is for real people who are not blind to faults, not immune to hurts, not averse to changes, not allergic to opposition, and not intimidated by competition. Love is for those who are not afraid to give of themselves, to receive from another, and to release those they love to the fullness of their dreams and destinies. Far from the absurdities and irrationalities that don’t stop to think before they act, far from the outrageousness and narcissism that worships “Me and I,” love transcends emotions, times, and distances. Drilling beyond obvious cravings, love reaches out of sight, to nurture depths no words can express.

God’s love toward us was not weak. No coward will lay down his life for another. It takes a brave heart to dare the risk of love and of loving. I am a product of love. My life is a witness that love is a gift that lifts the giver and receiver. True love endures through high and low. It stands when all else fails. The light of love is not quenched in darkness. Instead, it pierces the dark and shines brighter, to the dawning of newness. That is the kind of love the Father bestowed on us. That is the love Abba wants us to share with one another. I pray that you will know, in truth and indeed, what it means to love and be loved: nothing in life can be compared to the experience.

Glory!