What does it mean to fall in love? How do you know it's real?

A question for the poets, the musicians, and the philosophers: what does it mean to fall in love and how do you know it's real?

If I'm at all honest I will have to admit that I am not exactly sure what it means to fall in love. I know when it "clicked" for me, when I knew that my wife was the one for me, but I'm not so sure it was like falling. It was more like God whispering in my ear what I was already shouting in my heart: "She's the one!"

More important than falling in love is growing in love. Our culture tells us that love is a feeling that you feel in the pit of your stomach that feels like butterflies and makes you all giddy. That's not love; that's twitterpation (And no, that's not an over-obsession with Twitter. Watch Bambi for the reference).

The Bible says that love is a verb. It is an action that you do, not an emotion that you feel. We see that in the great romances of the Bible: Jacob and Rachel, Boaz and Ruth, Mary and Joseph, Jesus and the Church. In each of these relationships, love was characterized by actions, not feelings.

Jacob worked 14 years for Rachel's hand in marriage (Genesis 29:20--He married her after seven years and one week, but had to work a total of 14 years). Boaz married Ruth knowing that their descendants would bear the name of her dead ex-husband (Ruth 4:10). Joseph married Mary knowing that for the rest of his life people would always be whispering about her getting pregnant before they got married (Matthew 1:18-20). Jesus died on the cross and rose again on the third day so that we, His Church, could be a pure and holy bride (Ephesians 5:25-26). Love is not only an action, it is a self-sacrificing action.

That's how we can tell if love is real. Feelings are directed toward the self (I feel...); actions are directed towards others (I do...). You know love is real when the other person acts in a way that is for your own good without expecting anything in return, when they love you in spite of all the things that you know are messed up about yourself.

So how do you get love like that? I've talked to a few couples who have been married for over 50 years, and I always ask them the same question. And they always answer the same way. Put God first. They say there's no other way that they'd be able to get through life and put up with each other for 50 years if they didn't put God first.

Falling in love? Not so sure about that one myself. Growing in love? Put God first and each other second, and God will take care of the rest.