When love comes like a springtime rebirth from deadening routine, it can feel like nothing short of a miracle. I think that in our hearts we believe in the miracle of love, whether we fear it, look for it in all the wrong places, or wait for it to fall like a drop of water on a parched tongue. We may not know precisely what love is, but life without it seems bleak.

We believe the miracle will transform us into something better than we are, awaken the brighter angels of our nature, if not “bring us closer to God.” In fact, we tend to use the vocabulary of love and attachment about God:

“God the Father”

“Children of God”

“God loves us.”

“Father, we beseech you, do not abandon us.”

“Holy Mother the Church”

“To love another person is to see the face of God.”

“God created love to understand Himself more fully.”

The biology of love is so easy that fragile hearts must put up emotional barriers to prevent bonds from forming. The process of bonding is largely automatic and unconscious, driven by powerful hormones and neurotransmitters that create drug-like states of rapture and withdrawal. Opiate-like hormones provide a pleasure reward for attachment and a penalty for loss of love that can feel like drug withdrawal. Consider the hundreds of song lyrics like:

The pavement always stayed beneath my feet before.

When I lost my baby, I almost lost my mind.

Can’t eat or sleep or drink or think, can't do nothin' but shake without her.

Can't live without him.

Part of me was torn out when she left.

I'm sick, sick with a broken heart.

The brain changes during attachment formation and loss!

One theory of why humans are so susceptible to opioid addiction is because the substance latches on to receptors in the brain usually activated by attachment. Newman, Murphy, and Harbough report that the separation distress of baby monkeys and the maternal response to them have been greatly reduced through the administration of morphine. The interruption of attachment bonds caused by drugs may explain how addicted mothers can abandon their infants with scarcely a tinge of regret, then look for them in desperation when free of the drug effects.

Transformation

The miracle of love transforms us by integrating the ignored, dormant, wounded, disowned parts of the self into one. Love redefines the self, deepening and expanding what we know, correcting and revising what we thought we knew. More important than how love feels is what loving another person reveals about us. The only way to discover the self fully is to love someone. Love is the most vivid and compelling mirror of the inner self. The truth of love lies less in, "To know you is to love you,” than, “To love you is to know me.”

Many of us have a favorite mirror at home, shielded from bright light, the one we go to in times of vulnerability that gently conceals some of the lines and blemishes. Similarly, we tend to fall in love with those who offer the most benign mirror reflections, the ones that show how generous, open, flexible, passionate, funny, creative, intelligent, successful, and attentive we can be. Initially, the mirror of love makes us feel that we’re worthy of love.

But eventually the mirror reflects the whole self, including how petty, self-absorbed, ungenerous, rigid, cold, defensive, irritable, needy, dumb, and manipulative we can be. Its relentless chipping away at the idealized self is a necessary part of love's miracle. However painfully, the mirror of love reflects the harsh reality that forces us, through trial and error, to grow worthy of love.

Becoming Worthy

Looking deeply into a pond reveals the abundance of life beneath the reflective surface. Looking deeply into the mirror of love, beyond the glare of its reflective surface, reveals the soul of another person, with all its value and vulnerability. We feel genuinely worthy of love only to the extent that we appreciate and honor loved ones for who they are, not for what we want them to do.

If we remain compassionate, appreciative, and loving—through contentment, disappointment, sorrow, even failure of the relationship—the miracle of love transforms us. We cease to be mere reflections and become abundantly alive.