The past couple of months have proved busy, and yet it's been quite a journey. I'm sorry it's been two months since my last post, but here I am, once again ready to offer my God-given insights to anyone who will listen.
February, a month of love. Or is it? We celebrate this day, Valentine's day as an opportunity to shower the ones we love with gifts, cards, chocolate. But my question would be- do we need an excuse? I'd say that for some, yes. Love is about as common as the cold these days. I love pizza, I loved that movie, Oh my gosh, I love that guy... It's about as misused and overused as LOL... but don't even get me started on that- haha.
What is love? I think love is grisly, and ugly and painful. Love is about sacrifice, surrender, suffering-- but we don't like to think about that, we like to think about the rainbows and the puppies and kittens and chocolate that comes with love. Not that pain, not the hurt, not the cost. And I'm not just talking about the gifts, or the dates, or the movies and dinner- that's not really love. An expression of it, maybe- but that's not love. Love is letting your daughter who has pink eye and is sick sleep in your house and touch things even at the risk of catching these unwanted diseases. Love is feeling the pain that others are going through and knowing that there's nothing you can do but pray to God it will come to an end. At the risk of sounding super cheesy and cliche'- love is a verb. Love is not just something you say, though by all means, say it... make sure the people in your life hear it, but even more so, make sure you live it.
I was challenged several weeks ago by my mother- I told her I loved her and then prompted what has become the correct response- "I love you too". But she said, I don't want to say it, just to say it, I want to mean it. And there's a lot of truth in that. We say a lot of things we don't mean, as common courtesy.
"How are you?" "Fine, how are you?" Now there's a meaningful conversation if I've ever heard one. And yet, I take part in that same, or similar conversation about everyday, if not several times a day. What would happen if I was honest- "You know, I've been better- it's been a rough day, I'm going through a lot". Most people would probably be dumbfounded at that response, or worse, they wouldn't care. And that, I think, is what we are afraid of.
Now don't get me wrong- I know my mother loves me. Because she has shown me that love on countless occasions, and in this moment of infinite motherly wisdom, she managed to show me how much she loves me by not wanting to just spew lip service in my direction for formality's sake.
"I'm so proud of you" "You've overcome so much" "I'm so glad you're a part of my life" "You're too good to me" "I really enjoyed hanging out with you" "How's your mother doing" "How's God been working in your life" "Let's hangout this week" "Tell me a little bit about yourself"
In other words- I love you.
No comments:
Post a Comment