Love. A four-letter word that seems to have more definitions than meaning. I do not mean if you turn to your dictionary you won’t find more than a few. Most of them will be a variation of, “an intense feeling of deep affection.” That is what pops up when you do an internet search of the word. Of course, that is for the noun. The verb takes on a more worldly and romantic define, “a feel a deep romantic or sexual attachment (for someone)” or “like very much, find pleasure in.” But how did we get to a place where our definition is so limited.
I think I, like most folks, was taught of love in relational terms only. As a dependent child, I turned to my parents and rightly so. But like so many children who have imperfect parents, the love I received was imperfect and maybe even tainted my ideas of what love should look like. So, as I went out into the world I sought love in relationships, again as I assumed I should. I had been taught that marriage was where I would ‘find’ love. So as soon as I was in lust with a girl, I concluded that was love and if I would have checked out my Webster’s Dictionary, it would have agreed. Having a deep sexual attachment is the verbal definition. On that basis I entered a marriage and my disillusionment grew. Sex certainly was not love, and disaster was the results of this. A child, I did not know how to love, was born and because of his parent’s disillusion, his life was affected. He and I are still estranged.
I made one mistake after another with my definition of love at the center. I allowed my addictive nature to gain total control of my life. The deeper I sunk into self-gratification the more allusive even human feelings became. I now sought love at the bottom of a whiskey bottle or in the next line of speed. Relationships and marriages came and went. I romanticized each one thinking, I had at last found love. The truth was, at best, I had found co-dependency.
It was true that my marriage to Dianne lasted 26 years, but the first 20 years we were more co-dependent and addicted than in love. Yet it was in that relationship where love, real love was revealed to me for the first time.
Many of you who have read this blog or heard my testimony know that Dianne and I met when she was my bartender. As a fallen away Seventh Day Adventist, her life was controlled by demons as was mine that neither of us understood about the other. We felt mutual lust and that led to marriage. As it had in my past lust and love were synonymous. Life together was never easy. All the demons we never discussed before marriage became issues in marriage. Yet strangely we felt a bound in our struggle with them and at the time I thought that was love. Then came 2009.
Again, if you know my testimony I apologize. But out of the blue in that year Dianne announced she was returning to her faith which meant keeping the Saturday Sabbath. I was still deeply in the throes of alcohol addiction and did not take this news happily. I won’t go into all the details here but for nearly 6 months we fought and argued about this. Finally, the agreement was made if I would not spoil the Sabbath and attempt to read the Bible, I was free to live my life like the devil if I wished. It was in this process I found the true definition of love, some of you may know this verse, “Whoever does not know love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 John 4:8)
At first, I found this very strange and did not want to accept it. How can God be love? I thought love was ‘human affection’. Isn’t that what the dictionary says? Isn’t that what I was taught? But when I accepted that love was so much more, and I was open to the Bibles definition of love, “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have life eternal.” (John 3:16) Then everything else I did and felt changed.
Love was no longer something I did alone or even with another person. Love was so much bigger. Love came when I surrendered all I was to Him who had surrendered all to save me, a man who had cursed His very name. Love was in the cross of Jesus Christ and as His love filled me, I could finally love others.
Dianne and I shared that love until her death in 2014. Then amazingly two years later, God led me to a marriage with a school teacher who lived a continent away. I now shared a love that is not centered on myself or RuthAnn but each day we acknowledge Him, and He rewards us with love so complete we are one, as He intended. How awesome it that.
My prayer for you today is if you are in a relationship that is struggling, turn to the source that can redefine love for you. Turn to He that is love and believe me you will throw away your dictionary and find joy you would never believe.
Blessings John
1/19/18
