What is “True Love” anyway…?
Well, I don’t know what this will mean coming from me, but here’s my take on the whole shebang…
Yes- life is all about love. That wonderful fairy-tale romantic, star-crossed lover type of love… oh wait- that’s right, that part about fairy-tale would be the key point there. That sort of love is superficial, artificial, and a very “plastic” version of the real thing. It is commonly called “lust” or “infatuation”.
True love is something entirely different. True love isn’t a dozen roses and a bottle of champagne(although, that is nice on occassion). True love is when he does the dishes for you after you made a total mess in the kitchen making a meal that definitely wasn’t on his top ten list. It’s when he orders a pizza with mushrooms and olives because he knows you like it, even though he can’t stand the things and spends the entire night picking them off his slices. True love is biting your tongue when you’re getting ready to go out and notice he is once again wearing socks with sandals. It’s falling asleep together in the sofa because one of you rented the worst movie in the history of movies and you have nothing else to do. True love is sticking it out even when you may not like your partner a whole lot. It is when he agrees to drive across state lines just so you can visit some friends he has never met before. True love is making an effort to ask him about his day, knowing he is going to complain and you’ll have to listen patiently even though yours wasn’t the greatest, either. It is him forcing you to study for a test even though you don’t want to. True love is forgiving one another when you don’t always live up to your end of the bargain. It is doing all these things and many many more and expecting nothing in return.
Another thing you have to remember is that (and a lot of people will argue with me here) true love is a choice. We have been given free will and the gift of choice by our Maker, and, as a result, we must wake up every morning and make the choice to act toward our partner in a way that reflects the true love we have promised to him/her.
One last thing- yes, love hurts- it hurts a lot, and rather frequently, but that just shows you how much it is worth- and how much it is working. When you choose to love someone, you let them into a deep part of who you are, a place most people never even get a glimpse of, which makes it very fragile. And when you choose to give some that “true love” kind of devotion, you open up the most personal and the most fragile part of your person, your being, your soul- and that would be your faith and relationship with the Lord. When you do that, you are theoretically standing before the other person, naked and defenseless saying “here I am, this is me” and that is a very scary, very vulnerable place to be.
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