Love is ...

One day past Valentine’s Day. How did you fare? Did you get as many Valentine cards as the next person? Don’t you remember — as least for my generation — on Valentine’s Day, we all exchanged cards in school? At the end of the day we would count how many cards we received. It was kind of a barometer of how many people loved us.

Valentines have skyrocketed in value. Now, it’s big time with gourmet chocolates, expensive champagnes, and a night out of fine dining. To tell the truth, the day has little to do with love, real love. Today, people accept love as a feeling you feel. When you fall out of feeling, you fall out of love. Hollywood love has more to do with feeling than anything else.

But more and more, on the street where you live there’s a general notion that love has to do more with feelings than anything else. I hear husbands and wives confess as they seek marriage counseling far too late: “I love him (or her) but I don’t feel anything anymore.” They correlate feelings to the real thing. On the basis of an absence of feelings, they are ready to see a divorce attorney. Bad idea.

Love is not a feeling. Love is a behavior — a behavior that often results in good feelings. The Apostle Paul described love as patient, kind, and void of arrogance and bragging. Patience is a behavior that demonstrates love a lot more than a box of chocolates or dinner out or a diamond ring.

The greatest lover of all time, Jesus Christ, said that true love was the act of putting down one’s life for another. There again, it’s not a feeling, but a demonstrated behavior.

The late Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, used the illustration of a train to explain wholeness and salvation. The engine, he said, represented the facts. The caboose represented feelings. No caboose ever pulled a train. And no pack of feelings, however powerful, can sustain a relationship and pull a life for very far. If you love yourself or if you love someone else, it will take facts and behavior to make it last and to make it meaningful.

Take stock today of your love life. Are you trying to pull it along with feelings or behavior? If you are using feelings to pull you along, I bet you are about ready to throw in the towel. Try behavior as a better alternative to express your love and then expect a certain behavior in return. Teach your children that behavior is the criterion for love, not gushy feelings.

Someone said: love is a feeling you feel when you feel you have a feeling you never felt before. Baloney! Love is not a night out on the town. Love is a long-lived demonstrated behavior that consistently communicates the sublime values of life: patience, courtesy, and kindness. If you really love someone, copy this column from the on-line version and send it to someone who needs a good word on love. Love is something you do!