by John Grant
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” 1 Corinthians 13 4-8
It’s that week of the year when more flowers and candy are sold than any other week of the year. It is a week that focuses on love. Now I am not talking about loving chocolate or loving football. I am talking mushy gushy personal love, that deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness, that feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair. I’m talking real romance!
How does love happen? How can you explain it? Well, you can’t. You have to experience it and feel it. I have been either dating or married to the same awesome lady for exactly fifty years this very month. I remember the very day I first laid eyes on her. It was on a football field and I remember it as if it was yesterday. I knew she was someone special and she still is.
I can’t explain how my heart flutters whenever I think about her, but I sure can feel it. Scientists have tried to and a recent study looked at the neurology of love. The study concluded that falling in love can be a potent pain-killer, because it stimulates the brain’s reward pathway much like the rush of an addictive drug. But falling heard over heels in love isn’t exactly something a doctor can prescribe of a pharmacists can fill, but as one Stanford professor said, “maybe prescribing a little passion in one’s relationship can go a long way toward helping with one’s chronic pain.”
The study concluded that the euphoric phase of fresh romance to brain regions rich in the chemical dopamine opens the brain’s reward pathway… the feel-good mechanisms that encourage certain behaviors. Studies were done that showed patients who were stimulated with pain, felt less pain while looking at a photograph of the love of their life. That means that the brain can produce pain-controlling responses without medications.
However (and here’s the most important part) the study found that when new love’s flush fades to commitment, it doesn’t trigger the same brain response, so it is important to make sure that you are doing something new and romantic with your long-time partner to stir up that old passion and the study ended by saying that’s a pretty good idea whether you have pain or not.
So this Valentine’s Day, take time to rekindle that passion of old and renew the romance and remember that with this kind of pain-killer, having a headache will no longer be an excuse! (a thought on life from John Grant )
You can comment on this devotional online at:
https://thoughts-about-god.com/blog/2011/02/13/jg_love-is-like-a-drug/
John Grant is a former Florida State Senator and is a practicing attorney