loving more

I went to a wedding on Saturday and the couple made a promise in their vows to “love you more each day.” It occurred to me that that’s a dangerous promise, especially if you don’t know what you’re promising. What does it mean to love someone? How do you increase that love every day? Maybe I was in a curmudgeonly mood, but the phrase struck me as an insincere or at least an empty promise, a bit too “happily ever after.”

Most of us equate “love” in marriage (or at weddings) with a feeling of warmness and desire toward someone. But we also assume that our feelings are a response to our environment. We don’t have much control over our environment (like when our spouse leaves their clothes on the floor or the cap off the toothpaste again), so even if we’re really good at controlling our response to our environment (which is something I know I struggle with) the environment is still a variable that will probably keep us from finding our fairy tale ending.

But don’t think that I’m completely unromantic. I think that it’s possible to love someone more each day, just not merely in the sense of an increasing feeling of romantic attraction. Here’s what I mean. Service is love in action. And the more I focus on serving others, the more affection I’ll feel for them. It happens on sports teams and in wartime (see “Band of Brothers”). And it can happen in a marriage, where it’ll be expressed as being more and more “in love”. Remember that the next time you see an elderly married couple holding hands and making eyes at each other. (See, I do have some romance left in me.)

The bottom line is that instead of focusing on my feelings toward someone, I need to focus on my attitude and actions toward them. And that will indirectly affect my feelings, too. Jesus spent his life focused on others, starting with his Father and then expressing that in love toward the world. At the end of his life he even washed his disciples’ feet, an act of servanthood that shocked the disciples, and then told them to love each other as he had loved them (John 13). Jesus has shown me how to love others more each day. May he grant me the grace to follow his example.