“Love isn't a feeling. It's an ability.” (Dan in Real Life). It's natural to assume that love is a feeling. After all, we often feel strong emotions when we have love in our hearts. But we've got it all backwards if we assume that we must first feel love in order to exercise our ability to love. “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” (1 John 4:7-8). God is love and we are His children, so, in many ways, we are love too. It ought to be comforting and liberating to embrace the truth that our ability to love is not dependent on our emotions. We don't have to feel the emotion of love in order to exercise our ability to love. We can feel angry or tired or annoyed or sad and yet our ability to love can remain undiminished. The beautiful thing about love is that although it is possible to begin showing our love without really feeling generous or excited or joyful, we can not engage in selfless service and devotion for long without all of those wonderful emotions of love catching up with us. And it's not even about faking it until we make it. The anger and irritation and exhaustion that we sometimes feel are the temporary and fleeting imposters that try to convince us that we are incapable of exercising our ability to love in this moment. Perfect love casts out all of these emotions. Remember that God is love and so are we. At our core we are pure love. Our ability to love is a small piece of eternity that we carry with us. It is infinite and inexhaustible. We can love people and pets and petrified trees and prime parking spots and pistachio ice cream and perfect sunsets and peeling potatoes and millions of other things. I hope that we can all remember that all of our feelings, good and bad, do not and cannot impede our abilities and especially our ability to love. Our anger and fear and doubt and irritation are small and passing things, and when they all fade away, love remains.
