"I am Loved"
This topic of love has been floating through my conversations and thoughts this past month. Recently, I gave the sermon at church along with “I am Loved” buttons. The key verse, for me, was “…Your are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” (Mark 1.11 NRSV) Someone I know said, “Love is not an emotion, it is a choice.” I see the point. A silly example, but for my recent birthday, my husband gave me perfume. A perfume I had mentioned had the word, love, in the name or so I thought. When I opened it, I questioned, “Is this love?” Seeing the expression of “Oops, did I get the wrong gift?” on my husband’s face I immediately regretted asking. My daughter was in the room and we quickly concurred it must be love; even though she was not sure she liked the way it smelled. (smile) I am using it and we agree we like it more than we first thought. Perhaps this is what the comment about love being a choice means. Sometimes we just decide to like something or someone, we decide to try and then in the doing or trying love begins to grow. Sometimes love surprises me and I find it to be emotional. The kind of love where I was not even aware I loved a person until they are absent or when I greeted my newborn for the first time. I knew I would love her; I just didn’t know how much. The kind of love that hits me deep in my gut, takes me by surprise and then I seem to have no choice in the matter. Do you believe love is an emotion, a choice or both?
For me, these days anyway, it’s an emotion, an experience. It’s not a choice. Sometimes people or things just get into us, under our skin, out of nowhere, and we can’t seem to control it, and we can’t seem to control the fact that they spend so much time at the top of our minds every day. And somehow we can’t seem to help the fact that we love them. If it was a choice, I could stop it from popping up. But alas, I can’t seem to. I think the only choice we have in love is whether or not we choose to acknowledge the emotion we’re feeling…but either way, the feeling is either there, or the feeling is absent.
Thank you, a love for the bean, for reading and being the first to comment on my new experience in the blogosphere. I visited your website and like the Just Be(an) entry. A retreat leader once told me we are human BEings not human doers.
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