What I Mean by the Words, “I Love You”

“NEVER LET IT GO”

by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired, ©2013, blogging at Gulf1

(May 12, 2013) — If ones listens to or watches the media, Christianity is to be eschewed, Christians are scorned and being “born again” is laughable…which for a Christian is expected because there is an ongoing war between the forces of God who is love, and of Satan who is evil. Succinctly put, God loves and Satan destroys. So, what is love? Thousands, if not millions of expressions and definitions of the word “love” flood music and written media, but few people actually know the real meaning. One thing is certain, it’s not “making love” or the shorter description, “sex.” God is love and because of that inherent quality He gave His only begotten son so that those who believe on Him should not perish but have eternal life.

God’s love is abundant and unfailing. One can find it referenced throughout the New Testament of the Bible and is definitively explained in the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.

It is said that people “fall in love” as into a condition over which they have no control. And all too often they fall out of love with the same intensity as they fell into it, leaving them empty and lonely. These are not experiencing love; instead they experience the raging emotions that accompany a compelling desire for sex. That condition is mistakenly referred to as “love.” There is some honest confusion about love and it deserves clarification.

Love is when knees racked with pain, a wife of fifty years provides tender care for her bedridden, stroke-victim husband. She shaves him daily, sits him up and feeds him despite his severe stroke condition. She dotes on him as she would a newborn child, cleaning him and carefully turning him regularly to avoid bed sores. She does this for not ten days, or a month, but for years with joy, and yes, grim determination through the agonizing pain caused by bowed legs and knee bone-on-bone contact.  When the end came, she did not sigh with relief, but rather, bemoaned that she had not been able to do more. She never asked for help, never criticized, but persevered in her expression of love for a man who would only occasionally utter a cogent sentence and who was otherwise incommunicado.

Love is expressed by a wife who with the passage of time remained childless, and who in an era before micro surgeries and high-tech solutions in fertility medicine, without hesitation endured repeated major surgeries in an effort to correct internal damage that precluded pregnancy.  Love is that despite complete exhaustion, that same wife, a loving daughter cared for her terminally ill mother for months, no whining or complaining but filled with expressions of love and devotion.

Love is when someone does something for a person or cause at great personal cost with no expectation of reward, because it is the right thing to do. Love is to give up one’s own objectives to support another’s aspirations.  Love is shown by the widow who gives a mite, all she had, to advance God’s Kingdom.  Love is expressed by the Marine or soldier who without hesitation wraps himself around a live grenade and absorbs the blast to protect his fellow combatants. Love is expressed by Jesus’ obedience to the Father who sent Him, so that when the time was ripe, he interposed Himself on a cross between evil and humankind. “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

A mother’s love may begin with sex but is brought to fruition when despite her own hunger, she passes meager food to her child whose growing body demands more than she can provide for both. Her love is expressed by instant willingness to interpose herself between danger and her family.  She expresses it through a kiss to heal a cut or scrape, by sitting near her child’s bed for hours, even days when the child’s body is afire with fever. She answers interminable questions and the single word follow-up, “Why?” She knows how far it is to the moon, the sun and the planets; she knows the answer to every question and never loses patience with her child’s insatiable desire to know more. She listens attentively and consoles when her child pours out his heart over hurt feelings or loss of his first pet. She caresses, consoles and disciplines with love that flows from a pure heart.

One young mother bore a child out of wedlock and because she did not terminate him, he later became President of the United States. Yet, tragically, that same President supports the killing of an aborted baby who might survive the abortion. Is it out of self-loathing or short circuited values? Another let raging hormones win and when she learned that she was going to have a baby, she loved that living child within her enough to carry it full term and give it up for adoption, then years later by God’s grace is reunited with a young man who would make anyone proud.

Mothers, thank you for your love; never let it go. Have a well-deserved and Happy Day that rightly honors you. Mother, I love you and I’ll stand by you.

Semper Fidelis