Editor’s Note: Critical Conversations seeks to explore how some of life’s big questions are connected. Over the coming months, we will explore the central human experience of love from different perspectives. Today our guest contributor is a friend from Bethany Beach, DE, Doug Stewart who shares some of his lessons about growing in love.

Love is God’s way of sharing God’s self with His creation.  God’s love permeates all that is known and unknown.  When the human element enters, love becomes more complicated.  We are called to love as God loves, yet because of our sinfulness, we fall short.  My journey of learning to love and being loved has been a long and arduous trek.  It is comforting for me to know that the One who created me is also the One who loves me unconditionally.  Other people might want to substitute Higher Power or another name for the divine.

I first learned to love from my parents.  I am the oldest of three children of Max and Olive Stewart, and as a result, I was their template in learning how to love their children.  As with all new parents, they had no experience.  They also had obstacles of their own.  Dad’s father died when he was twelve, and mom’s parents divorced when she was a teenager.  Hence, they were challenged from the beginning.

I knew I was loved.  I knew I was loved, yet I received many mixed messages that left me questioning.  First love was not spoken, it was implied, and I have learned that I needed to hear the words, “I love you,” and to be reaffirmed.  At times my father had a very short fuse with me, and he would explode with violence.  From those experiences, I built a misconception of God and love.  My reasoning went something like this: My earthly father was supposed to reflect my Heavenly Father, and if my earthly father beat me, and punish me, I imagined my Heavenly Father would do the same.  The harsh concepts of God didn’t change until I was an adult, and I joined a recovery fellowship. 

Becoming an adult and seeking a relationship with another, I was ill prepared to love that other.  I had some warning signs in my teen years.  I would “go steady” with girls and grow disinterested after a short period of time.  I might add that breaking up was passive.  I simply moved on.  One of my steadies, after we broke up, wrote me a letter, and in it stated I had a rude awakening coming.  I really did not know how to love.

In early adulthood, I was married three times.  My first and third marriages ended in divorce, and my second wife died suddenly.  It wasn’t until I went into recovery for alcoholism that I began learning, first that God truly loves me, and that I could love myself.  By learning to love myself, I was able to love another.  In recovery I met and married my fourth wife, and we recently celebrated our 35^th wedding anniversary.

Our marriage has been a work in progress.  Both of us were broken when we met, and together we learned the true meaning of love.  We both are retired Methodist pastors, and I have been blessed to be the officiant of weddings.  In pre-marital counseling, I would explain that the love that attracted the couple to each other was a noun, a feeling or an emotion, and the love that would sustain their marriage was a verb.  It was an action word, a doing word.

Both Syd and I have applied this to our marriage.  We have worked hard to make our marriage work.  We are a blended family.  I brought a daughter into the marriage, and my wife brought boy/girl twins, and we have worked hard to make a loving family.  Our children are reasonably well-adjusted, and each of them knows fully that we love them – not just by our actions, but we tell them we love them.

Recently, I have been diagnosed with a genetic neuropathy that causes me to lose balance and fall.  Because of this, I am unable to do many things that I used to.  Syd has had to take on more responsibility in our relationship.  In a very real sense, she has become my caretaker, and she is truly carrying out her wedding vows.

There are two ideas that are essential to love and a healthy relationship, whether it is marriage, friendship, or love of humanity. The first is compassion, and the second is forgiveness.  Both are necessary for a relationship to thrive. Among attributes for compassion, one has sensitivity, and one is non-judgmental.  Forgiveness is the act of letting go of ill feelings toward another, clearing away any carnage that a word or incident caused.  Forgiveness can lead to empathy, understanding, and compassion for the one who hurt you, and it can lead to a strengthening the relationship.

To fully love others is the essence of life.  God created out of love, and God has given us the tools we need to love one another.  We are lost without God’s love in our lives, and we are wanderers in this world when we cannot love others.  I am grateful that I have had a second chance to love.