Love is....

Kindness
and
Patience
and
more stuff.
I haven't gotten to the more stuff yet. But I will get to that later.

Something I've realized very recently is that acting in love is the exact opposite of reacting in the flesh. Cogitate on that for awhile.

The rest of this is quoted from "Love as a Way of Life" by Gary Chapman.

The obvious competitor of patience is impatience. But what causes impatience? Pride causes us to react harshly to others. Pride says, "I am right and you are wrong. I want you to know how angry I am so you know how right I am. I can't be patient with you because that would be giving in, and you don't deserve that."

To quote Will Durant, "To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves." We often put others down through impatient remarks and angry rages in an unconscious effort to look better. We want to be recognized for how we have been inconvenienced, hurt, or mistreated.

When we wallow in self-righteous anger because we want others to notice that we are "better" than someone else, we are acting out of pride. Pride keeps us from seeing that the person we are angry with has just as much value as we do and that we are just as likely to make a mistake as anyone else. When we stubbornly focus on the error or weakness of someone else, we ignore what it will take to solve the problem at hand.

Patience gives us the freedom to let go of our need to be right all the time. It allows us the peace of putting relationships before the selfish desires that rob us of our joy.