Love is Kind

My experience with love has been full of contradiction. As a child, a young single adult, a spouse and a mother, I have not experienced ideal love. In fact, I look at my experiences and conclude that I have failed at love. This is about real love as I see it.

Love is kind,

except when there is a disagreement

and strong feelings arise that aren’t very kindly.

Love is not envious,

except when a mother-in-law* pulls away

the attentions of my beloved.

Love is not vain or proud

and seldom pretends to be what isn’t there

despite debts, death and destructive anger.

Love is not easily provoked

except when the baby is up all night

and there’s no food in the fridge.

Love thinks positive

and feels like a warm, fuzzy blanket.

Nagging is just frustration with things love overlooked.

Love doesn’t laugh maliciously.

Love accepts people without loving evil.

Love is true when nothing is left of infatuation,

yet something unbreakable remains.

Love carries on in weakness.

Love forges a path through fear.

Love perseveres present pain.

Love believes in purity,

even though reality is messy.

Love believes in forever,

especially when separation mocks it.

Love is hopeful,

except in the furnace of affliction.

Love endures,

in the form of knots, burls, checks, inclusions, and whorls that differentiate real love from pretense.

Only Jesus Christ’s love is flawless.

*This is not an indictment of my mother-in-law. I have experienced envy and it defies reason. Substitute any person’s name or an addiction for the term mother-in-law