in love with love

so i recently went to check the blog of a friend and was struck by the topic of a recent post. he claimed that love before a certain age or maturity level (kevin, please forgive me for paraphrasing so dramatically), was a waste of time. working with high school students (and college prior to that and junior high before that) i have heard this reasoning many times. oddly enough, it doesn't change very much from junior high all the way up through college. we believe that love, as an institution, is this thing that exists outside of ourselves.

"when will i find love?" as though it were something lost and in need of finding. love is a gift, but more importantly, i believe that love is a commitment. love is demonstrated to us daily by our maker. we mess up - he loves us. we reject him - he loves us. we cause him more pain than we could ever endure - he loves us. and out of this unconditional love, we see what love should look like.

i implore you, listen to this, if you rely on the feeling of love, you will forever be searching, and the search will leave you empty and alone. here is my response to my friends post (i am copying it in out of shear laziness, not because i fear i cannot duplicate the profundity of my original words):

believing that love is a commitment, not a feeling, i can easily say that someone who is young is more than capable of finding it in his or her self to make that commitment and choose daily to love a person. the problem is that we, as young adults or teenagers, don’t have the correct definition of love.

we wait for the feeling we mistake for love, which is merely childish infatuation, and when we find it, we call it love. we play at being adults until the feeling wears off, or the “love” gets hard. then we bail and leave a wake of broken hearts and baggage.

we desperately need to redefine love, not do away with it until a certain age. if you are mature enough to commit to something and see it through, even when it’s hard, then i think you are old enough for love. if not, then not.

so i encourage you in this - don't rely on the feeling. you could end up married with children and more alone than ever. look at our rate of divorce and infidelity. love is action. if you don't feel like you love your partner as much today as you did yesterday, do the things that show her you love her...even when you don't want to and your feelings will follow your actions. i promise. if you leave it to your feelings, you will fall out of "love" the same way you fell into it, and lives will be ruined.

if you are single, work on yourself. when you think you might be interested in someone (after getting to know him or her in social situations), make sure you are willing to commit before you ever even involve his or her feelings. that is how you start loving the person before you are even together, by protecting his or her heart and not subjecting it to pain if you are on the fence about your readiness for a relationship.

there is so much more to it all of course, and i would love to talk to any of you about specific situations, problems, questions or contentions. i believe there is a way to post comments anonymously, please do so. i promise to respond in a timely manner to the best of my ability. it is my desire to see people do love the right way, the way it was taught to us. we are flawed, and our love won't be perfect, but we should try.