'Live and Let Love': Stories about Finding It, Keeping It and Appreciating It

Read an excerpt from Andrea Buchanan's "Live and Let Love."

ByABC News via logo
February 2, 2011, 2:16 PM

Feb. 3, 2011 — -- Author Andrea Buchanan compiled honest and compelling stories about love from a soldier's wife, an award-winning actress and a college student.

Read an excerpt "Live and Let Love" below, then check out some other books in the "GMA" library

There is nothing more universal than love. It's what wedesire to feel, adore to bestow, fight to achieve, and grieve whenit's gone. Some would say love is the reason we are here . . . togive and receive it.

Since the dawn of humankind, love has been studied, pondered,pontificated and written about by scholars and sages ofantiquity. From Aristotle to Austen to Ephron, love unadornedand unrequited has been in style. The Holy Bible is one of theoldest texts to talk about love and can likely be credited withstarting the infinite fad: love is essential to living a faithfullife. One passage I find particularly striking in its definitionof love and its meaning was written by the Apostle Paul inI Corinthians:13.

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries,and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I canremove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.I first started to understand that passage when I was fourteenyears old. Saint Paul imparted to me that even with exaltedpowers, and surrounded by gifts, without love everything else ismeaningless. I grew up in Texas and I had "found God" in asmall, nondenominational Bible church. No one else in myfamily went to church but me. I was in search of meaning andhad deep questions about faith, but I also had a crush on a boy,who would become my high school sweetheart. He was fifteen,had a car, and I was allowed to ride in it with him as long as Iwent to church and came straight home. So I did, religiously, toevery Sunday service (morning and night) and Wednesday eveningsfor Bible Study. I would hold Ben's hand on our car rides,and during the Sunday youth group pizza parties. Early on inthis phase, I memorized I Corinthians: 13, and would recite it tomyself. I was falling in love for the first time and I felt that thewords in Corinthians had been written just for me. It was amagical time and I can still recall the way I felt when I wasaround Ben like it was yesterday. It was so new, so innocent andpure. Whether we were driving with the windows down on a hotTexas summer night, or enjoying a first kiss under the bleachersafter a Friday night football game, or discovering one anotherunder the blankets on a van ride to Colorado, falling inlove for the first time was a religious experience.

Six years and a couple of painful breakups later, Ben andI had moved on to different colleges and other relationships.God, as defined by the Church, became less important to me.Love, on the other hand, was still a supremely high priority.