“The Bible says in the first letter to the Corinthians chapter 13,7: love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. “

Is that really true? Does love really endure everything? Can it? What is love? Is it when we are in love and listen to pop songs dealing with love? Or is it maybe when we go for long walks in the moonlight, eating a romantic dinner and we feel that we are the only two people in the world and everything is good? Or maybe when we speak for hours on the phone with our beloved.

Maybe then is it easier to believe the word in the Bible.

But what if we are not in love, or the love we thought we had is being tested? How easy is it then to believe the Bible’s word, that love endures everything.

If the word of the Bible is true, is it then us, the humans, who give up to easily? Or is there more to it?

To me, the greatest and purest love is the Divine love. It is the pure love and power we are all born with. The power from where we all come. But alas, we forget the fastest. This is the kind of love, which doesn’t demand anything from us. It is unconditional.

It is when we obtain access to that love, that it can be and is a driving force in our lives.

However the human mind has a tendency to defuse the power we all have within us. We are far to busy judging each other and holding others and ourselves down. We often make demands of love, even when we don’t realize it.

Love between two people is strong, but there is probably not a stronger bond of love than that of the love between a mother and a child.

I thought I knew what love was, until my son was born in 1990. He was, due to a doctor’s malpractice, born severely brain damaged.  This led me to question everything I have known about myself and love up to that point.

Before I became pregnant I was married, working, believed in God, had friends. I was, what you would call an average Danish woman. I had what I considered to be a satisfactory and adequate life.

While I was pregnant, I would imagine how my life with the new baby would be. Our child had partially my genes and would continue my family to future generations.

But the normal boy with the normal potential was dead at birth. The future was over, even before it began.

All my plans, thoughts, ideas about our family life would have to die, so that I literally could keep my son Martin alive.

The fact that Martin was born the way he was drove me to a deep existential crisis. It was contrary to my ideas about adult life, life as a mother. Out of fear of perishing, I was so busy trying to hold on to myself and control everything that I ended up divorced.

But what was worse, I became filled with an indescribable rage. Anger against the doctor, who was to blame for the fate, my son now faced. I was angry with God. I just couldn’t understand, that if God loved really loved me, how could He allow this to happen?

Before I became a mother, there were several aspects of my personality that I took for granted.  Having Martin made me question time and time again who I really was.

It suddenly dawned on me, that I had kept my love a secret. Never really expressed it. There had been times, when I thought I wasn’t capable of loving at all. Martin opened up for all that.

My upbringing had taught me, that love equals money and things. But that had no significance for Martin. In order to have a close and intimate relationship with him, I had to give of myself.

In the 17 years Martin was alive, it happened several times, that I was close to giving up. Not for lack of love for my son, but perhaps because of it.  It saddened me to know, that I was causing him discomfort and pain several times a day, just to keep him alive.

There were day’s months years, where I didn’t have a full night sleep and I was physically drained.

But I still refused to give up. The deep heartfelt love I felt for him, made me go one more day. However there were days, when I had to ask God for the strength just to get through the next hour.

I received.

I always felt, that I had to take care of others before I could take care of me. Problem was, I never took care of me. I was so focused and concerned about how others were feeling that I forgot myself in the process.

This is something other mothers recognize. We sacrifice ourselves, but is that love? We have to give to ourselves before we can give to others. That is not selfish but self-love.

If we see our soul as a bank account, then we will have to deposit money, before we can make a withdrawal. 

For many years, I withdrew, without making a deposit. I wanted to show the world, how much I was capable of, but I succumbed to it.

We are a product of everything we encounter. Both the good and the bad. Because Martin and I were given the fate we were, gave me the opportunity to examine the rules I grew up by.

I grew up in a home, where children were seen not heard. The children of our time is often spoiled when it come to material things. “ I want my children to have everything I didn’t have” we all say. Or do we give out children all these material things to cover our own guilt of not spending enough time with them?

Because Martin was born the way he was, he had no benefit from cell phones, game boys or expensive designer labels. The only thing I could give him, was me. My love.

Before I could do that, I had to learn. Find that part of me. It was wonderful, but also somewhat frightening to discover how much love I actually contained. There were time, I tried to withhold some of that love, so others wouldn’t see how much love I actually had. However the emotionally deprived pattern, I grew up with was broken.

Martin did that with his mere presence. In a way Martin taught me that love is spelled T I M E .

Nothing is more important that the quality time we spend together.

Because of the profound and at times, overwhelming love I felt for Martin, it was painful for me to witness what he had to go through and I as a mother couldn’t just take his pain and carry it for him.

I was just so full of emotions and feeling, that it was difficult to contain them. However I discovered that by pushing the emotions aside and just act, I avoided feeling the fear, sorrow, despair, anger and devastation, which was just piecing my body.

At that time, I didn’t realize that it was just like holding a beach ball under water. You can only do it for a certain time. I used so much energy to keep the emotions at bay and gradually I had to find other ways to keep them down. The grief, anger, fears and devastation was eating me up. I used absurd quantities of food to stifle the unpleasant feelings and soon after they were buried so deep, that my soul almost died. I violated myself completely and developed an eating disorder. It was the only way I felt I could survive.

Throughout Martin’s life, I have more like a nurse and caregiver, than a mother. There were so many practical things I had to do, just to keep him alive. A part of me felt, that by acting like a nurse and caregiver, I could keep a mental distance to the agony I was feeling.

Shortly before Martin’s death, I finally let go and surrendered completely to the role as a mother and the pain it was to watch my son die. The only thing I could do was to ask God for the strength to let go of Martin and go through the pain it would be to loose him.

I already knew, that I loved him enough to let him go. I can’t explain it with words, but I knew, that by surrendering completely to love and thereby God, I was not alone.

That was the force that would get me through the day. It felt as if I got the strength I needed and the right people at the right time was sent to me. I had to let my ego step aside and fully trust the process. By doing that I got access to the strong Divine love that we all have access to, but maybe are afraid to feel

We can only feel it, when our egos step aside.

I have often asked myself if I was the one who kept Martin alive.

Was my love for him so strong that I kept him from getting the peace, he may have wanted sooner? Did I love him too much or was my love destructive. Did it keep him alive because I couldn’t or would let him go?

Or was it my deep love for him, which gave him more years here on earth than any doctor could have predicted or even thought possible?

Perhaps Death is timed perfectly. Was it the will of God that made Martin as old as he did?

I often think about my mission in life. I know that Martin came to me for a reason. I is not long ago, that I began to understand the mission. I am here to serve God. We all are and we all have different ways of doing it. Martin was also born to serve God. He had a mission. Martin’s mission was to teach me what love is. We went through a lot, so I could gain that wisdom.

He was the key to my love.

Maybe I, out of fear of loosing him, held on to something that should have been set free?

I realized that Martin had become my identity. Who would I be if he died? I couldn’t answer and that was frightening.

To me, love is about surrendering to something greater that yourself. Through the years, I have had so many feelings and emotions in my body, which I had tried to control and keep down, and it wasn’t until I surrendered, I felt I could start to tackle them.

I felt so low and depressed that I in near desperation asked God to take this burden I was carrying. I could cope any longer.

My soul had been dead for far too long and for far too long I had neglected myself and made food my friend.

As children, our parents label us all. One of my labels was I am the strong one.

I never questioned it. Not even when I was at the breaking point. I didn’t allow myself to feel the pain I had inside.

I was convinced, that if I had expressed the emotions I was feeling, then I was weak and being weak was not an option. It wasn’t allowed in my family.

But the strength was only a partial mask. I had to let go of my social mask to find out who I really was. For me, it was not only a way forward but also a way in – in to myself.

I started seeing a psychologist who was able to open up for all the emotions I had tried to suppress. I realized that not only had I been angry at the whole world, I had also been angry with God.

I started reading the Bible again. Once again, as so many times before, it gave me the peace I had been searching for in the wrong places.

I learned to feel love for myself, which I hadn’t done before. I learned that when I felt upset, stressed or other emotions, which would have resulted in over eating, I could now just sit down and do some breathing exercises. 

Then the need would disappear and my all to high stress level would diminish.

I also learned to forgive the unforgivable. I forgave the doctor and as soon as I had done that, he no longer had any power over me.  Me forgiving him, doesn’t mean that I felt it was ok what he did, it just meant that I no longer was a victim to the anger I used to be consumed with.

The anger put me in an emotional prison, but love set me free.

Martin died peacefully in my arms on a beautiful and warm evening in May 2007.

He went back to the power he came from.  Knowing that, gives me peace.

It gives me peace to know that the love I felt for him, made his life here on earth wasn’t wasted. Martin taught me what love really is and he was the key to my heart.

My love for Martin has not abated, just because he is no longer physically here. My grief and pain for having lost him, is at times almost unbearable. However I know one day I will get through it.

By using love as a force and be grateful for the time he was here and really rejoice over how many lives he actually touched, then a part of him will always be here.

Martin’s remains is at a beautiful and peaceful church cemetery north of Copenhagen, but he is buried in my heart.

I promised Martin on his deathbed, that I would live my life fully, to honor him. I will never close my heart but let it be filled by the love which he had opened up and that I know now I at any time have access to.

With my life experience life had taught me that God’s love is a force, which we all have access to. All we have to do is choose. Unconditionally.

So in response to the question that started this article, does love rally endure everything?

Yes. I believe that with all my heart.