Dating during highschool always came with some form of acronym to symbolize or represent the relationship. When I look at bathroom stalls today, nothing much has changed. Thanks to my older sister, I got into the habit of writing numbers or letters to represent words: 143 = I love you; 436 = Dale and Deedee; 5254 = Mahal na mahal kita (lame, I know!); DAM = Dale and Madelaine. Because I didn't have any other "real" boyfriends in highschool besides Dale, I pretty much stopped at 436 and DAM. We pretty much owned those numbers and that acronym. I staked my claim on almost every notebook I used during highschool. Dale and Madelaine. That's how it was and that's how it was going to stay. We were silly teenagers, trying to understand and express this thing called love. I think I expressed it pretty well. I'd think about him a lot, write him letters telling him how much he meant to me, skip school (just once!) to visit him, buy him random thoughtful things, stayed "true" to our exclusive commitment to each other. You know, things like that. He'd do the same in return. We had known each other as friends before we started "going out", so when he told me he loved me after 2 months of dating, I told him I felt the exact same way. We were in love!

Until that fateful day in November when the words "I love you" from my mouth were met with "I don't anymore" from his. I couldn't believe it. How could someone who said he loved me, wanted to be with me, wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, all of a sudden say "I don't love you anymore" just like that, with no explanation except for "I'm sorry"? You don't just fall out of love with someone! Months after I still didn't have an answer.

That was our highschool relationship and breakup in a nutshell. But as you can see, God brought us back to each other and now we can truly own "436" and "DAM". Love is an interesting thing and, depending upon who you're talking to, can be defined differently. You often here the phrase "love is not an feeling". And I'm sure those who say it truly mean it in theory but when it comes to practice, fall unguarded into the trap of emotion. If love is a feeling, then it is fleeting, transient, unstable, and prone to sudden change without cause or explanation. That's what feelings are and do. They come and go depending upon mood, circumstance. They often lie and are presumptuous. They can't be trusted wholly without precaution and thorough examination and often need to be rebuked for focusing too much on the self. I like the phrase "being in love with love" because I believe it to be so true. Some people I know are in love with love.

Then there's the phrase "love is a decision". In other words, choice is involved in love. Well, obviously. You choose who you want to love. And then in the choosing of how to show love to the one you have chosen to love is where love is found. Love is not found in the emotion that drives the choice, but in the choice itself which is guided by...obligation? need?

Today, Dale and I watched "Dan In Real Life". It's a really good movie and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. Towards the end of it, a minor character (a young teen in love with the protagonist's teenage daughter) says: "Love is not a feeling, it's an ability." I thought this statement over, trying to decide whether or not I agreed with it and why. The word "ability" is defined as 1.the quality of being able to do something (the power or knowledge to do something); 2. a natural or acquired skill or talent; 3. the quality of being suitable for or receptive to a specified treatment. If love is an ability then according to the definition it requires action or expression; it is both innate and learned; and it must be received.

Every person desires to be loved. Not by a love that is merely fueled by emotion, but by a love that is secure and unwavering; not by a choice that is made out of obligation or guilt, but that is driven by truth and desire. I have learned that only God can give love in all its fullness. There is no greater love than the love he showed me when he gave his life as a ransom for me. And when I am in Christ and He in me, I am able to extend and show that same love to my husband, the object of my affections on this earth, the one that the Lord made just for me for more reasons than simply to be my lifelong companion until death do us part.

You need to get love to give love. That desire for love that we all have needs to be 'got' by God. Once we experience his love, we have no other choice but to 'give' it to others: our friends, our 'enemies', the 'unlovables' around us, and our spouse. Not only do we not have a choice, but we have the power to in any and every situation.

Anyway, that's all for today. Hope ya'll enjoyed the long weekend and took the time to remember.