OVING ARMS WELCOMED ME INTO this world. I was a planned, wanted, and loved baby. I'm sure I wondered whether I was loved when admonished to "be more like the English or South African children." Was the love of my parents conditional upon my good behavior? (The previous sentence is based on a question one of my daughters asked me not so many years ago: "When did you start to love me unconditionally?" I quickly scanned the years and thought of instances she might have considered my love conditional. Did she feel that she had to be perfect to merit my love? that I wouldn't love her if she didn't finish eating her cauliflower?)

School years passed for me, during which rules were stressed more than a love relationship with the Lord. I don't remember having realized that nothing I did could make God love me more or love me less.

Besides the school curriculum, I learned what it felt like to have a crush (the informal meaning of the word is an intense but usually short-lived infatuation). This was years before M. Scott Peck wrote The Road Less Traveled. But at some level I must have realized that "real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience. Falling in love is not."¹

Fortunately I didn't confuse my love of South Africa with love for the person who suggested that I stay and marry him when my parents left! One night I knelt under a huge tree at Solusi Mission and asked God to guide me in the world that would be new to me. I renewed my baptismal vows to Him and asked Him to bring me back to Africa if possible. Shortly thereafter my brother and I boarded a converted troopship bound for England, where we would spend four of our childhood years. Then on to the United States and our father's alma mater, Emmanuel Missionary College (the forerunner of Andrews University), where I met Bob.

The Sounds of Love
It wasn't love at first sight, but first hearing! Bob always maintained that it was my accent that led him to me. By the time we were engaged we were already transitioning from falling in love to genuine love. There existed in our relationship that commitment present in a genuinely loving relationship. Peck's definition of love is: "The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth."² We were willing to do that for ourselves and each other.

The words of the solo sung at our wedding play on in my mind's ear:

"Together with Him life's pathway we tread
With one heart united by His hand are Led
His love e'er surrounds us, His comfort and cheer
Will ever sustain us though days may be drear."

We didn't think ahead to the time when death might part us. We thought of the goals of our lives-mission service and the four children we hoped to have. We felt God's love and comfort through the years. We felt it while Bob lay dying. But when I was left alone beside the dream we'd planned to share, what then? The "we" of Bob and me was broken-except for many memories and the hope of heaven. I learned the truth of Henri Nouwen's statement: "The pain you experience from the death or absence of the person you love, then, always calls you to a deeper knowledge of God's love."³ Death had called me to take a new step into the mystery of God's love. Slowly I came to realize that no human relationship could ever totally satisfy the needs of my heart.

The Basis for Love
Ginger Harwood-Hanks is our much-loved chaplain at the retirement villa where I live. She is able to bridge her world as a teacher at La Sierra University and our world as retirees. During a February prayer meeting she shared how she can see through the dyed hair, jewelry, and tattoos of students. It occurred to me that I needed to see past the wrinkles and walkers to the spirits shining from within fellow residents! So much life, love, and living exist behind each wrinkled face.

That February evening many of the 115 residents were waiting expectantly for Ginger to start her message. It was Valentine's Day. When students asked her where she was going to be on Valentine's Day, she said, "I'm going to spend the evening with my friends at the villa." She then spoke to us, "I've been looking forward to spending this time with you, because as far as I'm concerned, this is the perfect place to celebrate love. The love, graciousness, generosity, and compassion you have shown me week by week are overwhelming."

In my mind's eye I can see the group sitting in the comfortable red dining room chairs that easily roll to a more strategic seeing or hearing position. There is a limit to the time we will live and love here on earth. I miss a friend who had a stroke and is now in a nursing home. I resist the temptation to envy couples who have long- term relationships-75 years of marriage to the original partner is the current record.

And then there are the newer marriages-between people who have lost their partners and found each other in old age. Van and Verna have been married only a couple years, but the joy they find in each other's presence is palpable. I enjoy watching them as they join hands as appropriate during exercise time, not because they need the physical support, but because it's an inner thing. They told me that when they started going together, neither had marriage in mind. When Van proposed to Verna, she was already living in the villa and said, "But I don't want to start cooking again." "That's OK" was his response. "I'll be glad to do the cooking." An attitude like that makes room for the change and compromise necessary for any good marriage. And Verna? "She doesn't nag!" That kind of love wears well.

"We don't base our idea of love on cards, the media, or the movies. We know about love because God has shown us love, and we know that God loves us, because we have seen what God did in Jesus Christ. Everything He did was filled with love, grace, and compassion. What greater love is there than that He would lay down His life for us-to give up everything for us? This is the way God saw it: Heaven would not really be heaven if we weren't there to enjoy it. This is true love, when you want that other person to share the joy with you. This is love: "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son" (John 3:16). We can talk about God's love not only in terms of what He did for humanity by giving Jesus, but also in terms of what He does for each of us every single day."

He is giving Herb the strength to make multiple daily visits to his wife at the care center next door. He gave Miriam the courage to bounce back after compression fractures. He's enabling Elsie to keep an immaculate apartment despite loss of vision.

"Love is never further away than I can reach. This makes the difference in our lives. The invitation is to move into God's house and make it a home. We are invited to come and sit at His table, the banquet table where the "banner over me is love."

And I think of whom I will see at that banquet table-my parents who are buried at Walla Walla, Washington, beneath grave markers that simply state "He lived for God" and "She lived for God." And Bob, who is buried in New England. Will there be a complete family reunion? Will Bob see the three grandchildren born since he died and the five "little girls" grown up?

"Valentine's Day is the ultra Christian holiday, because we are the people who know about love. We have learned about it from the one who invented love. One thing more: having God's love does not mean that our life is always easy. It does not mean that there is neither pain nor suffering. But it does mean that no matter what we go through, we have a Friend. There is one thing that cannot be taken from us, and that one thing makes all the difference.

"Love is stronger than death, stronger than all the forces of nature, and stronger than all calamities. It feels like a blazing fire or a lighted flame. Many waters cannot quench love or wash it away."

Love Never Dies
I don't know how long it was after that prayer meeting that 92-year-old Ray decided that he needed human love as well as divine love-someone who would be first in his life, as he would be in hers. Ray keeps active and joins exercise time regularly. Could it be that the love between Van and Verna reminded him of what he missed and of what might still be possible?

Vesta, 89, had taught with Ray's first wife at John Nevins Andrews School many years ago. He had only good memories of that relationship, but he lived at the retirement villa in California, and she in her Florida home. However, there are phones and planes! He visited, she visited, he visited and met many of Vesta's relatives. She agreed to marry him, and he agreed to move to Florida.

A couple days ago I shared a quote that Ray really appreciated: "Old age does not protect you from love, but love, to some extent, protects you from old age." From what I've heard about Vesta, he will be well protected and will protect her well.

For those of us who are happily single comes the challenge and opportunity to spread love and warmth wherever possible. I want to remember every day that life's true meaning comes with the giving and receiving of love.

"Am I loving?" is one of the most important questions I can ask myself.

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¹ M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), p. 89.
² Ibid., p. 81.
³ Henri Nouwen, Mornings With Henri J. M. Nouwen (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Charis/Servant Publications), p. 48.

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Joyce Rigsby is a freelance writer living in Loma Linda, California.