“She Answered”
Why is this real love to you, he asked?
I guess to answer that question I must ask myself a more basic question. what do I define real love as?
To be honest if you asked me this maybe even a year ago I would have said that real love was hard. I would have told you it was sacrifice. I would have told you that sometimes it felt not worth it. I truly thought that was love.
If you asked me what real love was 10 years ago I would have described true love like in the movies. Where the guy gets the girl and they get married and live happily ever after. They never have any problems and they’re so happy.
I thought that was what real love looked like, just the good times.
I know now though that to me love isn’t any of those things. it’s not a fairy tale, it doesn’t just happen. It’s not self sacrifice for your partner. And most importantly it’s not perfect. To me real love is the basic understanding of respect for each other. Mutually wanting to join and combine individual goals, ideas, beliefs, dreams, plans and make them one together. It’s knowing that love, real love, is a choice. It’s so easy to pick to be angry and emotionally immature in love. I feel with real love though, even in moments of anger it’s knowing that you still choose that person even on their worst day. Real love is about accepting a person for all that they are and choosing to grow with them no matter how ugly some seasons are.
I was first told by nana when I was about 11 years old that in the Bible this is what God says love should be…
“Love is kind and patient, never jealous, boastful, proud, or rude. Love isn't selfish or quick-tempered. It doesn't keep a record of wrongs that others do. Love rejoices in the truth, but not in evil. Love is always supportive, loyal, hopeful, and trusting. Love never fails!“
1 Corinthians 13:4-8 CEVUK version
I know this is what God says love should be so to me it’s essentially what real love is.
I do think this is real love…
We’re kind to each other and patient with one another. We’re never jealous of each other’s positive things in life or compare and put each other down. We’re not rude or prideful toward each other we’re transparent and understanding and kind. We’re not selfish, we consider each other in situations. we’re not quick tempered with one another, which I think says a lot. I think both of our natures, the way we look at life sometimes is very angry. But you my love are my peace . We don’t keep records of wrong doings, we forgive and we move on. we grow and accept that each of us is doing our best in this world. sometimes we’ll mess up but that’s okay, because the other is here to stay. We both push each other to be better people and we are loyal to one another but also our individual selves, we are both supportive of each other and our dreams and ambitions and hobbies and we trust each other so much.
I truly hope our love doesn’t fail.