Love is Not Self-Seeking

I was presented with the phrase: "Love is not self-seeking" for my blog entry today.

Self-seeking is not a word most of us use frequently. I consulted Webster's and this is what was there:
"Self-seeking

Self"-seek`ing\, n. The act or habit of seeking one's own interest or happiness; selfishness.

Related Words for : self-seeking adjective
expedience, opportunism, self-interest, self-serving

1. interested only in yourself [syn: self-serving]
noun
1. taking advantage of opportunities without regard for the consequences for others [syn: opportunism] " *

I like the pharse "interested only in yourself." Whoa! If that's not the complete OPPOSITE of love, I don't know what is.

I met my husband at a church single's New Year's Eve Party. It was not love at first sight but at second sight. He had come with a friend to the party and then about 3 weeks later accompanied the same friend to a special program at my church.

That was the night I noticed him. In fact, it was as if he was being backlit with movie lights. Wherever I looked, light shown around him.

No, I wasn't experiencing problems with my optic nerve. I think this was just one of those unexplainable manifestations of attraction. All of us who have fallen in love have experienced the fact that when attraction begins, it makes us super-sensitive with our senses to the other person.

Well, that night was in January and we married October 5 of that year. And one of the things that made our dating, courtship and marriage last for years is that my dh is never "self-seeking." He just doesn't have a selfish bone in his body. This fact has continued to delight me over our years together. He just wants me to be happy. If I'm happy, so is he.

This alone makes him easy to love. He never demands anything. He never says, "Woman, you must be submissive. I'm the boss. I get my way."

Once a young woman was worried that her fiance was very concerned about whether or not she would submit to him when they were married. My advice to her was to "run, not walk to the nearest exit." If a man is already brow-beating his future bride with his desire for control (read that as seek for himself, that is a man who does not know what love is.

Many of us are mothers. I often thought when my children were small, that I would rather have suffered the ear infection, the cold, or the flu than have to watch them suffer. That I think is the essence of love.

And I'm grateful that I'm married to a man who didn't have to learn that. It was just there in him as a child of God. True love is not self-seeking.


*Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.