Blog # 225 LOVE IS S DECISION- 1

Blog # 225 Love is a Decision -1 Several years ago I was involved in a marriage enrichment experience in Monroe, Louisiana. One of the basic principles relating to marriage that was shared by the leader of the program was this: love is a decision. It would be interesting to have a hundred married couples sit down with pencil and paper and write a paragraph or two on the meaning this principle might have for them in their married life. Love is a decision. What else could it be? Some people might think of love as feeling, a warm pleasant feeling you have toward someone close to you. I imagine great ball players enjoy playing the game most of the time. Yet we can imagine a time when a ballplayer does indeed play the game without having a feel for it. I can think of an example of this in the life of a young high school student I was acquainted with in Kentucky. He was a quarterback in his senior year of school. On the afternoon of the day his team was to play their homecoming game the boy's Dad was killed in an accident at work. The question in everybody's mind was whether or not the quarterback would play, whether or not he could play. No doubt he didn't feel like playing on the evening of the day his father died, but he decided to play, and he played an excellent game, better, perhaps, because of his decision to play than if he played like so many other games because he felt like it. So for the quarterback that evening playing was not so much an expression of a feeling as it was a decision. So it is with love. Many times we love one another in conjunction with warm feelings toward one another, and love becomes easy. But such feelings cannot be totally controlled and times may come when we are called upon to love when the warm feelings are not present. We must simply decide to love, to love because we want to love, rather than because we feel like loving. Lower animals are attracted to one another by instinct. Some men and women seem to have a similar dominance of instinct in their relationships with one another whether it be in relationships of friendship or of enmity. Human creatures are designed and called to life on a higher plane. Friendship based upon instinct is not love. Love is a decision and is based upon freedom. It is a free response that begins in a recognized relationship of admiration and appreciation of another. When such a relationship is mutual we have love.