Love

"Love is not a feeling, it's action."

I don't know how many times I heard this from the pulpit, from Christian books, and well-meaning mentors and friends.

"Love is not a noun."

"Love is a verb."

"Love always does what is best for others."

I understand that this was all said to counteract our culture's popular view that love is a feeling, a whim, an emotion.

But I took love-as-a-verb to mean that love is always doing. Love accomplishes things. A passive love is not love at all. And wow, did that ever screw up my relationships.

If love is demonstrated by action, then if people don't act in a loving manner toward me, they must not love me, I reasoned. If they ignored me, were too busy to answer my Facebook messages, or couldn't spend time with me, they must not love me. If people were not acting in a loving (doing-good-stuff) manner, then they must not love me. I constantly craved demonstrations of people's love. And God's love.

I couldn't accept a love that just IS.

But here's the truth:
Love is not a noun.
Love is not a verb.
Love is a Being.

God is love.

And if love is a Being, then love can be expressed emotionally and through actions (and yet love is so much more than emotion and action).

Which brings up another point. I confused love and the expression of love. Expressions of love are rooted in Love itself. Love is eternal. Expressions of love are finite, events.

I was finding my security in expressions of love, not Love itself, and always looking for new examples of love. But expressions of love were not always guaranteed to happen when I wanted them to. And when I focused on the expressions and not the true thing, I always doubted if love would hold, if love would continue. A demonstration of love is not Love itself, it is merely the bloom, in the way that the rose is the expression of the rosebush. If you have a rose, will you have another rose? That is uncertain. But if you have a rose bush, you will always have roses, though not all the time. In the same way, Love is always there, even if it is not currently expressing itself.

And so, now what?

Now, I can rest in Love, that which is eternal. And I can enjoy the expressions of love when they come, knowing that even if they disappear, Love itself will not.