Love is like a rock

Love is a good thing!  Isn't it?  By definition if we do something unloving like then it isn't love. So if we manipulate and try to control others and call it love...well it's not love no matter what we call it.  So that is why I feel safe in saying that love is always good.

These heart stones are ones I have purchased over the years for my wife.  This is a portion of her collection.  The heart shape itself represents love in our culture.  These stones, when I give them to my wife, represent my love for her.  Naturally she needs more than the symbol of my love, I have to actually act loving and to tell her that I love her at appropriate times.  (There are inappropriate times to say "I love you".  Like little kids do to try to get out of consequences of their behavior.)  So love--the real thing is always good.  So now I can tell you the caption to the picture.

Love, no matter how its stacked, is good!

Since my wife and I have been married for a long time, we have been able to find ways to keep loving each other.  That, I think, is the lesson of love.  It is work, work to keep choosing love.  Work when something you loved about her changes or is lost.  Work to not let love get lost in the daily hassles of survival and raising children, or for that matter getting old. 


Love will change because we are people and people change.  We choose to love and consequently that doesn't allow us to use the excuse that we've changed and no longer love.  We continue to love because we choose to love.  We choose to love the person we remember from the past and the person that we each are now, and the person we will become.  That's the commitment I made when I married my wife.


I know there are some catastrophic things that can harm and maybe kill love.  Barring those hopefully rare events, lets find excuses to love rather than excuses to lose love.


So regardless of where Valentines day came from or who first started it and all that; lets just allow it to be a reminder, maybe a re-commitment to continue choosing to love each other. 

In Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card the main character Rigg remembers being taught by his father:

"For children love is a feeling; for adults it is a decision.  Children wait to learn if their love is true by seeing how long it lasts; adults make their love true by never wavering from their commitment."

(p. 360)