What is LOVE?

Can love be defined in a picture?

Is it the color RED?

Can you Google love?

Wikipedia seems to know what love is.

Apparently all you need is a LOVE Calculator to tell you if your relationship will work out.

My whole life I have probably been thinking about the idea of love. Hoping, wishing wanting it to happen to me. It is the love we all dream of having. Some people get it confused with lust/sex* or some Twilight version of love, a selfish need to have someone without whom we are nothing. The only person we are nothing without is Christ. Anyone else, it doesn't matter how amazing they are, if we are not good enough on our own then we will not be good enough with someone else. Same as if we are not happy on our own then someone else won't make us happy. It comes from within! So many times we think I want to be loved, but do we forget that we ourselves need to learn how to love? A Love calculator isn't going to determine if your relationship will work out. President Gordon B. Hinckley agreed with Pearl Buck, who said: "Love cannot be forced, love cannot be coaxed and teased. It comes out of heaven, unasked and unsought."

Often we try to force ourselves into love or force ourselves into thinking that we are in love. But love takes time, it grows. Love isn't "love at first sight" - that is attraction at first sight. Love comes as we take time to get to know someone, their interests, habits, perspective on life and the beliefs that we share. It comes as we share ambitions and dreams, hopes and fears. It is knowing someone well enough to learn their heart and character firsthand. President Hinckley has said, "Love--the companionship of one dearer than any friend; someone to be deliriously excited over and to be happy with; someone to stir within you the very best that is there; someone to grow more appreciative of, more tender toward, more grateful for, more a part of as one year becomes another and life move towards eternity." Love is a lifetime adventure to be embarked upon! Just like going on an adventure you get excited about it. President Hinckley quoted a columnist who said, "One of the grand errors we tend to make when we are young is supposing that a person is a bundle of qualities, and we add up the individual's good and bad qualities, like a bookkeeper working on debits and credits. If the balance is favorable, we may decide to take the jump [into marriage]... The world is full of unhappy men and women who married their mates because... it seemed to be a good investment. Love, however, is not an investment; it is an adventure." I remember a year+ or so ago thinking to myself and mentioning to Heavenly Father I want to find someone that I can have fun with. For me that meant that we would go out on backpacking, camping, traveling...adventures, that we would get lost together and laugh, that we could tease each other in a good way... For others it is something else. It is living, laughing, crying, forgiving, compassion, patience, happiness. Love is a gift bestowed and then to be acted upon. Like any gift from God if we do not act upon it, it can be taken away.

How do we act on this love that we find fills our hearts with hopes and dreams of how beautiful life could be?

This has been an unvocalized question in my heart for the last several months. I can't speak for how we get someone to fall in love with us, because this to me is a great mystery I wish to have unfolded in my life some day. But I can speak to how I have learned to ACT in Love.

I think one of the saddest things that I hear is when a wife or girlfriend treats their significant other with shrill voices, and live as if they are in control. I hear about it from co-workers, from friends, and I think there has got to be a better way. I remember listening to a talk given by Elder Holland called the Tongue of Angels. In this talk he gave some important chastisement to women. I remember at the time feeling grateful, because so often I feel like men are given the chastisement and women are looked over because they are sweet and sensitive. He said, "Wives, what of the unbridled tongue in your mouth, of the power for good or ill in your words? How is it that such a lovely voice which by divine nature is so angelic, so close to the veil, so instinctively gentle and inherently kind could ever in a turn be so shrill, so biting, so acrid and untamed? A woman's words can be more piercing than any dagger ever forged, and they can drive the people they love to retreat beyond a barrier more distant than anyone in the beginning of that exchange could ever have imagined. Sisters, there is no place in that magnificent spirit of yours for acerbic or abrasive expression of any kind, including gossip to backbiting or catty remarks." Would we treat our closest girlfriends in that kind of way? Why would we treat the closest men in our lives in such a way?

I listened to a talk the other day which well described many of the feelings that I have in regards to acting in love. It was called Ten Keys to Successful Dating and Marriage Relationships. It was given by Hugh W. Pinnock. The Ten things he lists are:

1.) Belief in Eternal Marriage

2.) Spirituality

3.)Communication

Any person you create a relationship with is going to have differences from you. There will be times that disagreements occur. We need to communicate our feelings and each person needs to not take offence but have understanding and compassion for feelings expressed.

4.)Kindness

5.)Trust

What I really appreciate about this one is that he said, "Be interested in one another, and yet set each other free to grow and mature--never free to flirt, but free to take on new challenges and to pursue new interests." I feel that dating or marriage is not meant to stifle your individuality but to encourage it, to support it, to embrace it. Something Sister Hinckley said about President Hinckley has long resonated with me, she said "He gave me wings to fly."

6.)Paying Compliments

7.)Talking Openly

Recently I have realized how important it is that we talk about the things that are hard to talk about. We should be able to have an open enough relationship to share our feelings of unhappiness without fear of backlash. We should be able to share our inner most fears without fear of being laughed at or chided.

8.)Apologizing and Forgetting

9.)Confiding Only in the Bishop (or Branch President)

10.)Having Fun

These 10 things I feel exemplify acting in love. And of course telling those that you love that you love them.

My hope is that we can learn to act in love. As Paul said, without charity we are nothing. To me that seems to speak that with charity we are everything. If we act in love even when there is none in return we become everything. Love is everything!

And the Greatest of These is Love President Gordon B. Hinckley

The Tongue of Angels Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

* Sex is not love, but it is an aspect of love in the appropriate setting. It is a beautiful, fun, pleasurable way to enhance a marriage relationship, but is not the only thing that will keep it going. Unfortunately you can't stay in bed all day every day, sometimes you have to come out and see the sun. =)