So I don't really know how to start this blog without being cheesy. I know that I want to tell you kids about love and what it really is, but even that sounds lame. I could ask you what love is, but that sounds like a miserable Sunday School lesson. I could even name some dramatic stories of love, but that's too emotional.

But I've seen love misunderstood too many times for me to not write this blog entry. Because "love is or it ain't." People often see other things as love when it's really just attraction or selfish ambitions.

Love isn't an emotion, it's not a flowing, breathless feeling, it's not an obsession with the other person. It's not an enchantment with how perfect the other person is. It's not found in the fact that this person has every single thing you've been looking for. Love isn't believing this person will entirely satisfy you, because people are incapable of doing such. Love isn't staying with someone who harms you. Love isn't given just because someone loves you back.

Instead, love is an action, it's a thing that remains when feelings change, and surpasses merely being obsessed with someone, but instead putting their well being above all else. You might realize that there are things about their past that you wish weren't there or flaws found in who they are, yet you will forgive them and accept them regardless. Perhaps you find yourself loving someone completely different than who you'd thought you'd end up loving, but that doesn't change love. Love isn't believing this person will entirely satisfy you, but instead you trying to the best of your ability to satisfy this person and then pointing them to the One who can do the things you cannot. Love sometimes means loving from a distance and letting people go. But most of all, love is given when it is incapable of being given in return.

I've seen the absence of love when people claim to have love at first sight. That's not love, that's attraction, and while that often precedes love, that ain't love. Love isn't obsession, because I can know every fact about Barack Obama and think about him constantly, but that doesn't mean I love him. Love isn't staying with someone who is hurting you, that's just being insecure, and if someone continues to abuse you physically or emotionally, you need to love at a distance.

Yet I've seen abundant love when my parents love me even though they're upset that I totaled their car. Love is shown when a friend of mine fought hard to stay a virgin until her wedding night with desperately wanting her future husband to do the same, yet found out that her fiancee hadn't waited, yet she looks past his mistakes simply because she loves him. I see love when I watch my dad give up his Saturdays to make sure my brother whose disability prevents him from communicating have fun, even though Matthew can never tell him "I love you, Daddy." I heard about love when I learned that four of the victims in the recent Aurora shooting were boyfriends protecting their girlfriends from death.