Love - actually

Happy new year everybody, and may it be filled with love for all of you!

Love... what is love?!

I´ve thought a bit about this over Christmas, a season which is supposed to be filled with love and joy, a season especially for family, to come closer, to celebrate, to spend time and give presents to show how we feel about each other. Living with the family Helland of five, rooming with 9-year old Kaleb has made me experience this in a very close way. `Coz what is love actually?!

Actually Christina and I ended up watching that movie one of the nights of Christmas, the famous, fun-loving Christmas show "Love Actually." The movie portrays a lot of different people in and out of love, from family relationships to friendships. They go through all kinds of different stuff, but through it all we end up with that familiar good-loving feeling inside, seeing the boy getting the girl, the best man being honest about his feelings and befriends his best friend´s wife, the British boy getting all his dreams about love fulfilled in the States, and an old singer realizes love is not at the wild parties, but with his old friend at home.

But is this really love - actually?

My view of love has definitely changed over the years. Maybe because I´m older and see it through more experienced eyes. I see Magnar letting my sister sleep in every week-end, and Christina doing the dishes every day (which she knows he dislikes) - and I´m wondering in a marriage with three little children how it is possible to show love in a deeper way than that?

I notice - in my own life and others - how great it is to be friends with people when life is good and easy - when we laugh and have fun and good talks - and how much it costs when it´s not, when you actually decide to visit a friend that is not encouraging you at all, or offer someone to get groceries for them when it costs you a lot. All when you do not sense that "lovey-dovey" emotion anywhere, it is actually the last thing you´re feeling right then.

So what is more love - the good feeling inside you or doing the dishes when you would rather not? Or both? Which one is more important?

This morning I read from the "love chapter" in the Bible - 1. Corinthians 13. It´s probably the chapter most quoted in weddings and speeches about love and relationships. But reading through it I´m thinking to myself - this is really hard! Wow! Is this really love? This doesn´t give me a good feeling at all.... To me it talks of self-sacrifice and hardship which will eventually lead to good things, but also even more struggles.

When I googled the word "love" the pictures in this blogpost are only some of many alike them showing up.

So have we misunderstood something here? Or put the weight on the good feelings instead of the hard work? I´m just asking....


"......Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;  does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;  does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
  Love never fails....."