True Love

One of my new favorite blogs is over here...Marriage Life

I loved a section from a post that was wrote...
"We think…
Love is easy.
Love is gushy.
Love is exciting.
Love is uncontrollable.
Love is a feeling. It comes and goes.
Love is something I give to someone based on how they make me feel.
The problem with this is we have a skewed human view of what love is. It doesn’t even come close to God’s version.
Love is hard.
Love is sacrificial.
Love is an action.
Love is a choice.
Love involves commitment and cost.
Love is unconditional.

God is Love
Wow! Could it be more true? As Lent season is very quickly approaching, I was thinking on this and back to a sermon my father-in-law once preached  in the Easter Season. I know it was not long after I had Will. I know that because it focused on how much God loved us. He loved us SO much he gave his son. I looked down at my sweet, blue eyed perfect boy. He GAVE his son.

If you are most like most mamas (or daddies or aunties, uncles, grandmas, paps) I know, no one hurts our babies. Their tears are like knives to the heart and we would do anything to make everything ok. So give you my son? Never. I would say I would die for someone I love. But hand over my son for them? Hand you my heart. Never. I remember tears falling over my face, sliding down my cheek, and falling into his hair. Not my son. God your son? Trust me...I am not worth it.

And yet, He said I was. And you are. That is love.

We are to love like him. Pastor Paul (AKA Dad-in-law) did a sermon on should we love only the lovable? Nope. Why? (I knew the answer.) Cause we certainly are not always lovable.

I guess this is where V-day and Lent intersect this time. Loving someone, ESPECIALLY the person you have pledged your life to is not easy. It is not about feelings or as Marriage Life put it the way they make me feel. True love and lasting love is an action and a daily choice. God's love, true love, is the only things that lasts. that will endure. Our human ideas? Our expectations? Ours wants, needs, and love? It will fail you. Because it has no sustainability. Who can truly love someone like that all of the time?

Today I choose you. I choose to love you no matter the cost to me. I choose to stand next to you even when you don't ask or deserve it. I will not make decisions based on feelings that are fleeting and sometimes deceitful depending on mood, hormones, or phases of the moon. Feelings can lie about what is true. When (not if, but when)  it gets hard, draw me to you God. Help me again.

Today I will be God's hands and feet. Love you not with my ability but through the eyes of a Father who loved you so much he was willing to give the most precious thing imaginable.