Before you fall in love, you would do well to learn to step into love, and to so cautiously.
Step into love? What on earth do you mean? That sounds rather mechanical and devoid of any …any …well …love.
The important or operative word to look at in the phrase falling in love is not the word “love”. Rather it is the word “fall”.
To “fall” means to trip, to splat, to lose one’s footing and make unintended and often brutal contact with the floor, the ground, or the bottom of a cliff. The following examples will suffice to make the point:
He slipped on the ice, fell, and broke his leg.
She tripped over the dog, fell on the sidewalk and broke her collar bone.
Jim fell out of the airplane before putting on his parachute.
Can you think of any use of the word “fall” to describe anything other than an unwanted, undesirable, and dangerous situation to be avoided at all cost? Yet we are very comfortable using the word “fall” to describe and to explain the momentous and extremely consequential situation of being attracted to, becoming involved with, and bound to another individual who will impact our life for better or for worse in ways we can’t even imagine—for the rest of our life.
Do you agree that the Bible and, especially Jesus, uses the word “love” to explain the highest state of being—of God’s relationship to His son Jesus, and extended through Christ to man. If so, you must also agree that it is so used to describe a state that is the furthest thing from an accident or an unintended action or an accidental attachment to another.
People commonly use the term “fall in love” to describe the state of initial attraction to another due to their appearance or their personality. What we are describing is more honestly called a state of infatuation. I question whether infatuation has anything much to do with love. Here are just two reasons why. First, it’s easy to be highly attracted to numerous people based on their appearance and personality. Second, if a person “falls” in love, they can just as readily and easily fall out of love. After all, it just . . . happens.
For example, a guy says to his friend, “I can’t explain it; I just love her. She is so great”. A year later, he says to his friend, “I can’t explain how it happened; I just fell out of love with her. I just don’t love her anymore. I don’t know how it happened.” This kind of thinking is nonsense. The truth is he never loved her in the first place.
Infatuation is exhilarating. It’s a maximum adrenaline rush. So is skydiving. . . . You just better hope you packed your chute correctly. Marriage, without careful planning, preparation, and counseling, is like stuffing your parachute any haphazard way because you can’t wait to jump out of the plane.
© Mike Williamson 03-2010
Mike this is great, How can I forward it?
Hi Jeannie, that somewhat depends on who (how many) people you want to forward it to. But the procedure is probably much the same. I’m not sure what email program you use (Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook, etc). Maybe Art will help you with it.