A friend and I were talking about love. She sounded pretty turned off. In her view, love was illusive, erratic, undependable. She saw it as coming and going, an impossible ideal.

"You can be in love one minute," she said, "and the next minute it's taken away and you're left with pain and sadness. Then you're no use to anyone."

She decided that being in love makes you vulnerable. "You get walked over or you become a hypocrite, loving on the outside, going along with other people to stay in their good graces, but feeling hurt and weak and sad inside."

My heart went out to my friend.

Love can seem fragile. And when love is mostly just human emotion or physical attraction, it can be disappointing.

But there is a love that doesn't disappoint. The Bible says there's a love that stays forever: "I have loved thee with an everlasting love" (Jer. 31:3). This love comes from God, who is Love. It is perfect, profound, magnificent, grand. Cynicism, sorrow, hypocrisy, hurt feelings, disappointment, disappear in its presence. God's love is absolutely dependable, unchanging, never-ending, never withdrawn. It is as present and available as the air you breathe. Every individual includes this beautiful quality because each of us is God's expression. Love is natural to us.

Being present everywhere, God makes it impossible for us to be separated from Love. "God is love," the book of First John explains, and "he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him" (I John 4:16). To "dwell" in love is simply to love—to act with the love that is inherent within you. And love lived is love felt.

Still, if you're in anguish over a broken relationship, all this might sound impractical. When one of our daughters went off to college, her boyfriend often called me on the phone or stopped by to visit. Sometimes he helped make meals, and once he helped paint our house. He was like one of the family.

After one spring break, however, my daughter and this young man broke up. His calls and visits stopped cold. Even though my daughter eventually felt peaceful about the relationship, I missed him, and was saddened by what I saw to be insensitive and unkind actions. I wanted to bring my heart in line with this rule: "love one another" (see John 15:12). I felt that the only way out of the struggle was to pray.

Over many years I had learned that listening for divine Love's guidance and comfort is the ultimate problem-solver. Prayer had healed me many times. God has helped me directly by giving me a word of truth, a spiritual insight, or gentle offerings of peace and confidence. So, while I felt bad, off and on, I had periods of quiet listening. It wasn't always easy because I still felt sad and hurt. I had to persist in listening. I wanted to persist. It wasn't enough just not to care, or to leave the issue unsettled.

One day, driving on a lovely mountain road with my husband, I found I was ruminating again, "He doesn't love us anymore." Then God broke through with a clear, gentle reminder: "But you can always love him."

That was a shining moment! All the bad, sad feelings evaporated. Of course—what could stop me from loving?

I never saw or heard from that dear fellow again, but whenever I think of him, I think of him with love.

Later on, I could see that it wasn't really being loved that I was missing. I was missing being loving, which is as natural as being honest. Love is not so much poured out at you as it is pouring out from you—like a flower exudes fragrance because that's what flowers do. Circumstances or surroundings can't stop flowers from being aromatic.

I learned another lesson about love. It isn't possessive. It is unselfish. In that moment of insight, I saw that my capacity to love wasn't dependent on a person or a thing. Love is a quality we reflect, which is as present as God.

To live a life of love consistently takes moment-by-moment attention. But even in the middle of what you feel is a love-drought, prayer opens your thought to receive God's love.

"Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need" (Science and Health, p. 494). That's what happened to me, and it is a promise for everyone.