`We're just going to love her'

ONE Thanksgiving Day our son telephoned from six thousand miles away to tell us he had met ``the girl of his dreams.'' (He really said those very words.) Could he bring her home for Christmas? Three days later, he phoned again to ask if we could prepare a wedding as part of our Christmas celebration. You have to understand that for more than twenty-five years I had been practicing my gracious response to just such a request from any of our children. It came off well, I thought, and the planning began. Less than a month later, the young cou ple stepped off the plane. We were on tiptoe to meet the girl of our son's dreams. She was gorgeous! Her blond hair defied common sense. It hung within inches of her high heels. As nearly as we could tell, she ate only chocolate, and she could explain everything mechanical. The whole day and evening went by before my husband and I were alone in our bedroom. ``Well, what do you think of her?'' I asked, though I was really eager to voice my own opinion. My husband's reply set the tone for the years to follow, and put our son's marriage and family beyond the reach of pettiness. ``We're not going to think about her,'' the soon-to-be father-in-law declared, ``We're just going to love her.'' I knew the law of Love when I heard it. Jesus said, ``A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.'' 1 I knew the Way-shower didn't mean, ``Have a good talk about one another, first.'' Could I muster the humility and self-denial to comply? A knock on the door, and our daughter slipped into the room. ``Well?'' she asked. I repeated her father's injunction. Her face held a look of mingled surprise and satisfaction. It mirrored my heart. How the human mind loves to judge, but when shown a better way, it can yield. Another knock and another family member. Before the younger brother could even raise an eyebrow, his sister was shaking her head and saying, ``Pa says we can't talk about her. We can only love her.'' I'll never forget that night in our crowded bedroom. It was family in the sense that Christ Jesus taught: ``Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.'' 2 We were being asked to do God's will by obeying another Christly demand. Jesus said, ``Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.'' 3 To stifle mere human opinion and to love is surely righteous judgment. Sci ence and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, says: ``The one Mind, God, contains no mortal opinions. All that is real is included in this immortal Mind.'' 4 Opinions are ephemeral things. They come and go. The love that comes from God, from divine Love itself, isn't based in opinion. It doesn't increase and diminish. It is anchored in unchanging good. To express this love is to love one another in the way Jesus directed, not reacting to mortal views of another, to partial and faulty views. This is the Christly love that heals. It provides the dimension and the light in which the spiritual innocence and wholeness of each of us may be understood. This spiritual nature of man, our actual selfhood, is always present. It isn't an add-on. It's the way God has created man, and it's the way God continues to cause man to be. Love is the light that reveals the perfect, infinite measurement of man. These teachings of Christian Science have been indispensable in raising our family. They have been a spiritual leaven, a healing, transforming influence! I have quoted from the Bible and Science and Health to show why the demand from their father to love their new sister-in-law seemed natural to our children. The other day (almost four years later) our much-loved daughter-in-law asked, ``What did you all think of me when I got off the plane that first morning?'' We all looked at each other and back at the new mother with her baby in her arms. We smiled as one of us said: ``Oh, we didn't think about you. We just loved you.'' 1 John 13:34. 2 Mark 3:35. 3 John 7:24. 4 Science and Health, p. 399.