I want to take a break from all of the partisan bickering about the Iraq war and talk about something much more important: love.

This may seem like sentimental gobbledygook, but here it goes.

My two daughters are adopted from China. They are 3 years and 18 months old. They were adopted at different times and are not biologically related.

As I was watching them play together, and was just enjoying the sight of their horsing around, teasing, laughing, I was struck — again — by how much I love them and how that is such a mystery.

I, like many other people who considered adoption, sort of wondered if I would be able to love these adopted girls like a parent loves their biological ones. It is human nature to have this concern, and it may be in some weird way supported by the modern notion that our emotions are controlled by genes and biology.

But love is completely incapable of being scientifically quantified or understood. The love I have for my kids, and that our parents and siblings also have for them, is truly a mystery. We don’t know where it comes from or how it grows, but it does, like a beautiful flowering tree that grows on its own, without any human intervention.

Of course, I say that, but mankind has known for centuries where love comes from. It is a free and total gift from God. Whether you believe in him or not, he gives it to you to for the sheer pleasure of watching his creatures be happy and enjoy, even if only for a moment, the lives we are all given.

The giftedness of this love to me is proven by my daughters. My wife and I felt love for them even before we met them or knew who they were (when adopting from China, the Chinese government assigns a child to you about one to two months before you go there to get them).

We went to get our girls when they were 12 months and 10 months, respectively, and after the initial freak-out of becoming a parent soon began feeling that warm glow of parental, ineffable, infinite love for our children.

How does that happen? I defy any scientist anywhere to explain it. Oh, sure, some talk about how we are “programmed” to love, but that really doesn’t hold water.

This is not to poke a finger in the eye of science. My point is that the love we feel is so wonderful, so beyond our ultimate understanding that it must have an origin which is itself beyond our full understanding. That is what I mean by it being a mystery. A mystery is not something you can’t understand at all; it is something you can only partially comprehend, but never fully.

The great thing is you don’t need to understand where love comes from or how it works. You can just enjoy it, savor it, reflect on it, and make sure you do everything in your power to be worthy of it by being the best parent, husband, wife, friend, daughter, son, etc., that you can be.

So in this Advent season, leading up to the greatest gift of love ever made, I ask all of us to remember the love and cherish it in a special way. It is a free gift of our most benevolent, loving Creator and he rejoices when we do so.

Trey Hoffman
Peachtree City, Ga.

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