Love: Feeling vs. Acting

I have had a lot of time in the last week or so to reflect on love. My mom will probably write an awesome book someday about loving every day, we had a family reunion where there was some discussion about love and covenants, and then I came home and continued my reading of The Five Love Languages. It was during this reading that I came across an excellent concept--we are capable of feeling love, but also of acting with love; and they do not necessarily have to be happening at the same time.

This same idea was also presented in the book How to Hug a Porcupine, when the author talked about being kind and caring because that is who we are and not necessarily because the other person deserves it. In other words, acting with love, or making the decision to love for ourselves. I had read that months ago, but it took what I read today for it to really hit home that, "Hey! I can do something about this!" In The Five Love Languages he illustrated this point with the story of a woman that asked him if it was possible to love someone that you hate, or that hates you. Because she was a religious woman he went to the scriptures for help in answering her question and came across the scripture about loving our enemies, doing good to them that hate us, and blessing those that curse us. Luke 6:27-36 (There is a link the the scripture, it is not the King James Version, but the message is there). Anyway, it goes on to say that anyone can love those that love them, but how much greater are we if we can love those that hate us? To carry on, this woman said that she was willing to try, but struggled with the feeling that if she was acting how she did not feel that she was being hypocritical. Gary Chapman (author of The Five Languages), told her that he thought it would be hypocritical to claim to feel things that you do not; but to act with love and do something for someone else is a decision we make. He went on to say, "Certainly we do not have warm feelings for people that hate us. That would be abnormal, but we can do loving acts for them. That is simply a choice."

Though Jesus was perfect, and was therefore probably able to act and feel lovingly towards those that hated him, hurt him, and cursed him. I think that, perhaps, if we can focus on acting with love rather than feeling it that we will be fulfilling that commandment. There are days when I don't feel particularly loving in general, but I can still perform loving actions on those days. There are certainly people that I just don't mesh with or even like, but I can act with love towards them too. In The Happiness Project Gretchen talks about acting the way we want to feel, and many times she ended up feeling that way. Who knows? Maybe the secret to getting out of a grumpy funk is to act with love, and on a smaller scale "the best way to defeat your enemies is to make them your friends" (Loose Abraham Lincoln quote), maybe if we act with love towards those that make us crazy, we will feel a little less crazed. That would certainly make a lemony day more sweet!