I printed this off and am using it as a dry erase board for me and the hubs. It sits in our bathroom Too many days pass without us thinking to speak lovingly to each other. Just to walk into the bathroom and see something the other one wrote feels wonderful. I love you today because.....It could be something that I did not know he even recognized, but he shows me he did! Love has to be spoken, intentional, with effort.
  Me and the kids are studying the fruits of the spirit. We have learned that love perceived by the world is strictly based on emotion, or what we feel. I'm sorry, but there are times when I don't feel like loving. God's love is not based on a gushy feeling, it is a choice. He chose to love us as we are. We too have to chose to love others.  We are choosing to love, even when we may be unlovable. It is these simple acts of being intentional with our words and actions to each other.

1 Corinthians 13 (The Message version)

The Way of Love

 ¹ If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. ²If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. ^3-7If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

   Love never gives up.
   Love cares more for others than for self.
   Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
   Love doesn't strut,
   Doesn't have a swelled head,
   Doesn't force itself on others,
   Isn't always "me first,"
   Doesn't fly off the handle,
   Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
   Doesn't revel when others grovel,
   Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
   Puts up with anything,
   Trusts God always,
   Always looks for the best,
   Never looks back,
   But keeps going to the end.
 ^8-10Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.