We Choose Love...
I thought I would take a small break from posts related to my new novel and instead share my thoughts on what many people who know me well would call my favorite subject: Love.
I love Love. I firmly believe that it is the most powerful force in existence. This post is not intended to preach at you, but I am a Christian and make no apologies for that, so my appreciation of love and my focus on it largely come from a biblical background. Toward the end of the famous Love chapter of 1 Corinthians 13, Paul states, "And these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love." That is a huge statement. To Christians, faith and hope are the foundations of what we believe, yet Paul states that love is greater than both. Wow.
What I want to focus on today is my belief that Love is a Choice. Too often, however, we treat it as something we either feel or don't, end of story. And if at any point we stop feeling it, it must be gone. So we separate out what is ours and what is theirs, and we move on, searching for that feeling anew. But while their are many feelings associated with love, love itself is not merely a feeling. As 1 Corinthians 13 lays out, it is a collection of actions. And we, as human beings, choose our actions.
Therefore, Love is a Choice.
A little over three years ago, just after Christmas 2016, I was single and reflecting on the beliefs and expectations I had formed about love over the first twenty-eight years of my life. What came of this reflection was a personal essay entitled, fittingly enough, Love is a Choice.
I reread it a few times, liked it, shared it with a few people, then tucked it away...until I met Emily.
We met last May (2019) when she walked into the store I managed wearing a Geneva College shirt. Geneva was my alma mater so we struck up a short conversation and later in the day she returned to the store and left her number for me. It only took fifteen minutes into our first date for me to realize that I wanted a second one, and by our third date on Memorial Day, I was already beginning to fall for her. So on that date, I pulled out my old essay and encouraged her to read it.
Unbeknownst to me (at least for quite awhile) it resonated and stuck with her.
Over the ten months that followed, she used my thoughts from that essay as a mantra when we faced challenges in our relationship, or simply when I was getting on her nerves. In those moments she reminded herself that Love is a Choice and made it.
Eventually she shared this with me and I was quite taken aback at the thought that a set of musings on love I had shared with her in the very beginnings of our relationship had had such an impact on her.
And so, four days ago, when I was preparing to propose to Emily, I read this essay to her again(I will also post this essay as it's own separate post):
Then I got down on one knee, told her that I wanted to choose to love her everyday for the rest of my life, and asked her if she would do the same.
She said yes.
I love Love. I firmly believe that it is the most powerful force in existence. This post is not intended to preach at you, but I am a Christian and make no apologies for that, so my appreciation of love and my focus on it largely come from a biblical background. Toward the end of the famous Love chapter of 1 Corinthians 13, Paul states, "And these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love." That is a huge statement. To Christians, faith and hope are the foundations of what we believe, yet Paul states that love is greater than both. Wow.
What I want to focus on today is my belief that Love is a Choice. Too often, however, we treat it as something we either feel or don't, end of story. And if at any point we stop feeling it, it must be gone. So we separate out what is ours and what is theirs, and we move on, searching for that feeling anew. But while their are many feelings associated with love, love itself is not merely a feeling. As 1 Corinthians 13 lays out, it is a collection of actions. And we, as human beings, choose our actions.
Therefore, Love is a Choice.
A little over three years ago, just after Christmas 2016, I was single and reflecting on the beliefs and expectations I had formed about love over the first twenty-eight years of my life. What came of this reflection was a personal essay entitled, fittingly enough, Love is a Choice.
I reread it a few times, liked it, shared it with a few people, then tucked it away...until I met Emily.
We met last May (2019) when she walked into the store I managed wearing a Geneva College shirt. Geneva was my alma mater so we struck up a short conversation and later in the day she returned to the store and left her number for me. It only took fifteen minutes into our first date for me to realize that I wanted a second one, and by our third date on Memorial Day, I was already beginning to fall for her. So on that date, I pulled out my old essay and encouraged her to read it.
Unbeknownst to me (at least for quite awhile) it resonated and stuck with her.
Over the ten months that followed, she used my thoughts from that essay as a mantra when we faced challenges in our relationship, or simply when I was getting on her nerves. In those moments she reminded herself that Love is a Choice and made it.
Eventually she shared this with me and I was quite taken aback at the thought that a set of musings on love I had shared with her in the very beginnings of our relationship had had such an impact on her.
And so, four days ago, when I was preparing to propose to Emily, I read this essay to her again(I will also post this essay as it's own separate post):
"Love is a choice.
The warm, fuzzy feeling that lasts a few months is simply the science of attraction. This may serve to kickstart a relationship, but when that chemical reaction fades, love is a choice.
We can choose to love our family, or not. We can choose to love our friends, or not. We can choose to love our enemies, or not. We can choose to love God, or not. Love is not really love unless we choose it; love cannot be an obligation. Hence the reason God allowed sin to enter the world. For how could He truly be loved by us—His creation—unless we have the ability to choose otherwise?
I have mixed feelings on the idea of finding “The One.” While the romantic notion of magically finding the perfect person and having a fairy tale story appeals to me greatly as a writer, neither my readings in the Bible nor my own experiences point to its validity. Rather, I believe that we choose our own “One” because the truth is, both people must choose each other and must have the commitment and perseverance to continue to choose each other every day, through better and worse, sickness and health, for as long as they both shall live.
I hold no illusions that there is only “One” woman in the world I can choose to love. In fact, I believe we can choose to love anyone. We simply don’t. Out of preference—and often out of necessity—we exclude those who have or don’t have certain qualities or values, those who don’t look a certain way or aren’t from a certain area. Yet even after we sort every person in the world through our extensive (or not so extensive) filters, we’re still left with a pool of hundreds, if not thousands, of very viable candidates. So, with the help of circumstance, luck, or fate, we are left to choose and hopefully be chosen in return.
And isn’t that the crux of the matter? In the end, don’t we all want to be chosen? I don’t believe, deep down, anyone could truly be satisfied with forced love from another. To choose and be chosen in return every day for the rest of your life: There’s your magic. There’s your fairy tale. There’s your fate. What could be more romantic than that?"
Then I got down on one knee, told her that I wanted to choose to love her everyday for the rest of my life, and asked her if she would do the same.
She said yes.
This is lovely! Thanks for posting!
ReplyDelete