Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

I keep on opening the Bible to read these verses from Corinthians 13. They're beautiful. They're a source of strength. Even a person who cannot be bothered with religion would agree that the words in the Holy Book sums up true love. I read it all the time. When I was a teenager I read it at weddings, because I was too young to be one of the bride's maids and too old to be a flower girl. And my awkward age caused me to be familiar with the verse. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would be those words.

Love is a beautiful thing. It is not Sex and the City. It is not Why Men Marry Bitches. It's not He's Just Not That Into You. It's not even the Unbearable Lightness of Being. It not any of those books. It is greater than anything one can ever feel or experience.

Love is not a game, where one person has to win and the other surrenders. Nor is it a formula for finally getting your white dress and your happily ever after. It's not a dough that you can mold into something. If it starts to grow in you, you have no choice but to heed its call. The beginning isn't always nice and sunny. And I have faith that with a sturdy pair of shoes and enough belief, love can walk through anything. Even a warzone. Or a road full of dog poop. Or the Atlantic Ocean. Or the deserts of Dubai.

So help me Love.