Love is patient and kind. Not jealous or boastful or proud or rude or irritable. It conveniently forgets wrongs. I’m curious–does anyone actually love like this because I don’t.

The notion of being loved by someone who never gives up on us, never loses faith in us, always exudes hope and stands by our side through cancer, job loss, seasons of doubt, or mental health issues floods our bodies with feel-good hormones and causes our expectations to soar. No wonder 1 Corinthians 13 is read at so many weddings.

But what happens when we try to practice this kind of love? I am sometimes impatient, unkind, jealous, arrogant, and rude on the same afternoon. Just ask my husband (or sons) for confirmation. If love really is the most excellent way, why do we consistently fall short?

1. We assume love is a feeling rather than a choice. Whenever my husband eats ice cream before bed, he snores. I am a light sleeper. About an hour after the three scoops have descended into his stomach, he begins making guttural noises akin to a wild boar being chased by lions. In such moments, love is not the word that I would use to describe my feelings. I must choose to love him.

2. We assume we fall in love rather than understanding that we walk into love. We fall into uncovered storm drains and swimming pools. Falling into suggests that something unexpected happens to us (see below), something beyond our control. While there is an element of being hoodwinked by infatuation, we must work (and work hard) to develop and maintain love.

3. We are selfish humans. There’s a reason we all laughed at the scene in Finding Nemo when the seagulls chant, “Mine. Mine. Mine.” We tend to want what we want when we want it and can easily view any obstruction as an obstacle which needs to be plowed through or climbed over. When you’re behind the wheel of the pickup sporting the snowplow, it makes perfect sense. When you are the snowbank, not so much. Mike Mason writes, “Love is meant to be an earthquake relocating the center of our universe.” Feeling those tectonic plates shift beneath your feet is utterly disquieting–and exactly as God intends.

4. Because Americans equate neediness as one of the seven deadly sins, we assume we can successfully love by sheer determination. And we are sorely mistaken. In and of myself, I can do the following: brush my teeth, get dressed, walk the dog, and eat chocolate. I desperately need to tap into God’s resurrection power for everything else. And. I. Mean. Everything.

5. We forget (or never understood) that the commitment to love has far reaching consequences. My choice to love my husband well impacts not only our children but our church and even the greater community. Loving well creates and fosters a robust and healthy ecosystem. This civic responsibility increases the pressure but also eases our aloneness.

6. We fail to be authentic and vulnerable because we fear rejection. Others can’t love what’s hidden. If we persist in offering the world a false self, they will learn to love that false self. We will only feel secure in another’s love if we stop hiding what we imagine is offensive or inadequate. Anne Lamont writes, “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.” We can begin to silence that voice by allowing others to see our imperfect, flawed self.

7. We fail to love others if we do not understand how profoundly, how passionately God loves us. Henri Nouwen wrote in Life of the Beloved:
“Becoming the Beloved means letting the truth of our Belovedness become enfleshed in everything we think, say, or do. It entails a long and painful process of appropriation, or better, incarnation. As long as “being beloved” is little more than a beautiful thought or a lofty idea that hangs above my life to keep me form becoming depressed, nothing really changes. What is required is to become the Beloved in the common places of my daily existence and, bit by bit, to close the gap that exists between what I know myself to be and the countless specific realities of everyday life. Becoming the Beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am in.”

Put prosaically, we can’t give away what we do not own.

To answer my earlier question, “Who loves like this?” Jesus. Only Jesus. I have come to understand 1 Corinthians 13 as a target but also as a description of how God loves me. Today and everyday. May we celebrate love’s true source on this day devoted to love.

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Warthog photo courtesy of Anthony Greco.