Tag Archives: Love

That Time I Almost Blew It

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I tend to take things very literally. Like, way too literally sometimes.

So here’s what happened.

Darren and I had been on one date. That one date was the only time I had ever seen Darren in my life but I liked him. We were in college and one evening after that first date I walked past him in the library. He was standing at a computer and when I walked by I punched him in the back, grinned, and kept on walking. When I walked back through the room Darren was still standing at the computer and I stopped a few computers down to check my email.

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Handsome Mr. Darren walks over and asks me if I want to go get an ice cream. And I was like, “no.”

That’s it. That’s all. No explanation, just no. Because, here’s the thing, I don’t really like ice cream and at that particular moment I literally didn’t want ice cream so the answer to his question was just no.

If he had asked me if I wanted to go out with him again, I would have said yes.

If he had asked me if I wanted to get a coffee and talk, I would have said yes.

If he has asked me if I wanted to go running around the building in the dark, I probably would have said yes.

But ice cream? No.

Poor guy. The time between the first and second date can be quite delicate, you know, when you’re waiting to see if the other person likes you enough to ask you out again or if they just sort of dodge you instead. So being the kind, sensitive person that I am, I flat-out turn Darren down the very next time he tries to talk to me. Ayy, yayy, yayy.

Lucky for me Darren is very persistent and kept asking me out…and he must have asked me the right questions after the ice cream mishap because here we are.

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Oddly enough, it was a while later on an ice cream date when I realized that I loved him…but I still don’t like ice cream so the answer to that is still no :]

You & Me

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Dear Darren,

Five years ago I said “I do” to you. That was pretty smart if you ask me. I love you for lots of reasons…some reasons I can’t always pin down or articulate, some I can. Here’s a few—I love you {in part} because:

268012_10150229426821517_7391311_nYou make  me smile

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And you make me laugh…a lot…sort of foolishly at times…until I can’t stop and everyone is staring at me…so thanks for that.

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I love you because you are silly and don’t take yourself too seriously.

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I love you because you are gentle and kind and good to every living thing. Your heart is huge and I love every inch of it.

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I love you because every winter, the first time it snows, you build me a miniature snow man and leave it on the counter for me to find.

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I love you because, hello, those arms are absolutely fabulous…oh, and you built that frame to go around the mirror for me…but mostly I like your arms.

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I love you because you work so hard and because we have invested ourselves in so many projects together. Thanks for teaching me how to sheet rock, babe.

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I love you even though you throw me in the lake sometimes.

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I love you because you are adventurous.

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I love you because you pick flowers for me…and you get kisses for it too :]

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I love you because you are the best uncle to our nieces and nephews and I know someday, you will be the best dad too.

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I love you for so many reasons and am thankful for each day we’ve had together and I look forward to each day to come.

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P.S. I love you very, very much for agreeing to build a fort on the living room floor and stay up all night watching movies to celebrate our 5th anniversary. Seriously, do they even make men better than that? I say no.

Sweet Love

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“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

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“If you’d never been born, then you might be an Isn’t!
An Isn’t has no fun at all. No, he disn’t.”

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“To the world you may be one person; but to one person you may be the world.”

DSC_0724“You’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting,
So… get on your way!”

All quotes by the fabulous Dr. Seuss

Laugh Together, Cry Together

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We are asked to rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep; easier said than done.

It’s difficult to relate to people who are going through vastly different circumstances than we are. It’s hard to know exactly what to say or do when everything in my life is good and someone I care about is just trying to keep their head above the deep waters. It’s difficult to be happy for other people when our own hearts are breaking.

How can I connect and relate when my life is so different? Does someone struggling even want to talk to someone who’s breezing by? I know from times of struggle just how annoying and patronizing it can be to have someone who’s doing just fine stop by and say, “Don’t worry, everything will be okay. I know what you’re going through.”

Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. Either way, looking at your pretty little life doesn’t make me want to tell you about my problems.

And yet that is exactly what we’re asked to do: We’re asked to enter into each other’s lives—bright and beautiful, dark and ugly—all of it without regard to what’s going down in our own lives at the time.

We’re asked to rejoice with those who rejoice—even when our heart are bleak and weary.

We’re asked to weep with those weep—even when we have great joy we want to share.

We’re asked to go beyond ourselves and find our way into the beautiful mess of each other’s lives.  We’re asked to be there for each other when everything is right and when everything is wrong. We’re asked to empathize and understand the joy and sorrow all around us in the lives of those we love.

I’m trying to learn how to do this, how to set my own life and circumstances aside and enter into the array of beauty and sorrow that paints each of our stories.

Using Prayer as an Excuse for Inaction

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It’s easy when we hear about needs and problems in each other’s lives to promise we’ll pray for one another. Prayer is of course a very powerful and important resource in our lives. But sometimes prayer can be misused as an easy way out of taking action in the lives of those who are hurting. We misuse prayer when:

1) We fail to see how we can help each other by taking action: We mean well when we promise to pray but it’s easy to overlook the practical ways we can help on a physical level too. In addition to our prayers we could:

  • Take a meal to a new mother, someone who is sick or injured, someone who is grieving, or to a family struggling financially.
  • Listen to someone who just needs to talk through feelings and be heard.
  • Volunteer time to help around the house or yard or to run errands.
  • Babysit for a busy mom or someone who is sick or grieving.
  • Write a letter to encourage and let someone know they’re being thought of and aren’t alone.
  • Say yes as much as possible when asked for help or a listening ear.

“I learned that faith isn’t about knowing all of the right stuff or obeying a list of rules. It’s something more, something more costly because it involves being present and making a sacrifice. Perhaps that’s why Jesus is sometimes called Immanuel—‘God with us.’ I think that’s what God had in mind, for Jesus to be present, to just be with us. It’s also what He has in mind for us when it comes to other people.” Bob Goff (p. 8 Love Does)

2) We use prayer to turn a blind eye: Sometimes we don’t want to get involved in other people’s lives or in problems that seem too big for us. We hear about kids being run through the foster care system needing loving homes and families but we’re afraid or overwhelmed by the idea of bringing a child into our own home—so we say we’ll pray instead and never really stop and consider if there’s more we should be doing. We notice the mom who always snaps at her children in public and never stop to consider if she needs rest, help, or encouragement. We don’t want to get our hands dirty. We’re too busy and too tired to get involved in the messy lives of others so we say we’ll pray (and perhaps we even do) all the while turning a blind eye to the physical needs all around us.

“Jesus told the people he was with that it’s not enough to just look like you love God. He said we’d know the extent of our love for God by how well we loved people.” Bob Goff (p. 15 Love Does)

3) We use prayer to guard ourselves from heartache: Getting involved in people’s lives can get messy. When you open your heart up to love and action, you open yourself up to the possibility of getting hurt. It’s so much easier to say, “I’ll be praying for you” than it is to get in the trenches and ask, “What can I do to help?” But the love of God is a love deep enough to take action—to take risks and offer love in spite of the potential for heartache. God did not guard his heart from us; we should not guard ourselves from others. God’s heart was broken for us—will we let our heart be broken for him?

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves

4) We use prayer to cover wrongs rather than dealing with them: Sometimes when we say we’ll pray, all we really need to say is, “I’m sorry.” I know of a situation where someone has been wronged and hurt by someone else. The wrongdoer tells the wronged that they’re praying for them but those prayers (however sincere) are falling on deaf ears. Until the wrong has been made right, prayers will only add insult to injury. The person hurt does not want to be prayed for; he wants only to be apologized to. And until an apology is made, prayer comes off as arrogant and insincere. If you have wronged someone, make it right with them—not just in your prayers to God but in your actions toward the one you have hurt.

“We don’t like to put hands and feet on love. When love is a theory, it’s safe, it’s free of risk. But love in the brain changes nothing.” Donald Miller

God’s love is played out in verbs as should be the love we have for each other. So, the next time you tell someone you’ll pray for them—do so—and then ask what else you can do to demonstrate your love in action.

Night Mail

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You want to hear a story? Oh good.

So, the husband and I attended a university where guys and girls still live in separate dorms across campus from each other. You can call it old-fashioned but having separate dorms led to something rather adorable in my book: Night Mail. You see, the guys and girls each had a wooden box rigged up on wheels with a rope on the front to pull it around. In these boxes the students would leave letters and packages addressed to each other and at night, after we were all back in our rooms for curfew, a couple of guys or girls (depending on who’s turn it was) would grab the wooden box and roll it across campus through the dark laughing and giggling about all the love letters and cologne drenched envelopes being sent from one heart to another. Once to the other side of campus, the boxes were exchanged and the letters dropped off in stacks at each of the dormitories. Then a couple more students would take the stacks of letters and slide them under Romeo or Juliet’s door. It was a hoot…and quite romantic, really. I remember how exciting it was when a letter with my name came sliding under the door. I would snatch it up, hop in bed, and pour over the words of the man who would later become my husband. Darren and I now have boxes of letters from our dating days. So much of our relationship is scripted out in the words we wrote back and forth as we came to know and love each other. Darren the artist filled his letters with drawings and illustrations that still make me smile when I come across them. My favorite picture he drew was of me calling him:

The little guy jumping in the air–gets me every time :]

Between night mail and all the time we spent living across the country from each other, written letters became a staple in our relationship–and we still write each other letters today. Sometimes old fashion is the best fashion of all, kids ;]

When It All Gets to Be Too Much

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Sometimes I feel like all I ever do is gawk at a computer screen. Between working in front of a computer and writing on a computer, there are days when I literally spend hours connected to technology. Then you add in the time spent on Facebook, Twitter, reading other blogs and the news, online shopping, and all the other things I end up doing on the internet and sometimes it all just gets to be too much. It’s a funny thing though, because even though I’m starting to get overwhelmed by hyper-connectivity, every time I pull away from the computer for a few minutes, I start to miss it. I start to wonder if anyone has said anything exciting on Facebook or if I’ve had any hits on my blog. I start to wonder if one of my favorite stores has put anything on sale online or if I have any email. It’s like I’m addicted to the screen–like I don’t know what else to do with myself if I’m not clicking around on the computer.

Yesterday I really started to stop and think about how much of myself I devote to screen time–and in doing so, how much of myself I take away from the people and things that should matter so much more than an email or an online sale. How often do I whittle away precious time with my husband by pulling out the laptop instead of sitting and talking to him? It’s amazing how the two of us can be in the same room, sitting right next to each other, and still be completely disconnected by the TV and internet standing between us.

I realize I’m starting to get burnt out and just need to take a break for a while. Fortunately, next week will be the perfect opportunity to do so. Darren and I will be taking a break together and will be cut off from internet, TV, video games, phone–the works. We’ll be spending time just the two of us without all the distractions of technology and hyper-connectivity.

I can’t wait to just sit and look at him. To look at the man who stole my heart in spite of all my fighting, the man who works so hard to provide for us and to show me his great love–just to sit and look at the big brown eyes that won me over 7 years ago and still win me over every single day. How could I ever pass those eyes up for a computer screen? Sorry to be so sappy, but I’m just starting to realize what I’ve been missing out on and can’t wait to really reconnect with a person, not the internet.

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.” Henry David Thoreau

It’s Now or Never—Building Relationships

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Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the small windows of opportunity we have in life–especially concerning relationships. People universally want to be loved and accepted; we want to know that the people we care about care about us too. If I care about someone who doesn’t seem to care about me, the window of opportunity for that person to build a relationship with me closes quickly because I’m inclined to pull away and close up in order to avoid getting hurt. I’m not even talking about romantic relationships but friendship and family relationships too.

I see this in a lot of parent/child relationships. When kids are little and always at their parents’ heels, the parents take for granted that their children will always want their time and attention. Parents are busy people–they are often tired and running in five directions at once trying to keep up with all their responsibilities. In the hustle, kids sometimes (for long times) fall to the side. And then the kids grow up–fast–and they are gone. They grow busy with their own lives and concerns and pretty soon the tables are turned. The parents’ lives are perhaps now slowing down and they finally have the time they’ve always wanted to spend with their kids–but the kids are gone. They’re in college, or married with children of their own, or living far away and that small window of opportunity to build a lasting parent/child relationship is closed to some extent. Not that you can’t rebuild relationships, of course you can, but it will take far more time and work when you’ve pushed people away and have to re-earn their trust.

So often it’s now or never and never comes so soon.

I’m learning that if I want to have deep meaningful relationships with people, then I have to make those people a big priority in my life. I have to let people know they matter to me and they’re worth my time even if my time is limited.

I have five brothers and none of us have been very close since we all left home. The six of us are spread out from Missouri to Louisiana to Massachusetts so get-togethers are few and far apart. We go months upon months without speaking at all–no phone calls, text messages, e-mails, nothing. This is hard for me because I want to be closer to my family. I always tell myself that the lack of communication is just because they’re men and men don’t always want or need the same level of communication that women do. But the truth is, they can’t communicate with me regardless of whether they’re good communicators or not if I don’t make time for them and let them know they matter to me. They never call I say, but I never call either. Maybe I’ll call and the phone will just ring and go to voicemail and maybe they’ll never call me back–but I won’t know if I don’t try and if I don’t try my window of opportunity to stay close and build a relationship may shut sooner and longer than I think.

If I shut people out of my life when I feel like I’m not important to them, who am I to think they won’t do the same to me?

Harry Chapin’s song Cats in the Cradle reminds me of all this. I didn’t understand the meaning of the song when I was younger but I’ve always liked the way it sounds. Now I see just how true his words are and how important it is that I make people a priority in my life–before it’s too late.

Cats in the Cradle

“My child arrived just the other day He came to the world in the usual way But there were planes to catch and bills to pay He learned to walk while I was away And he was talkin’ ‘fore I knew it, and as he grew He’d say “I’m gonna be like you dad You know I’m gonna be like you”
And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon Little boy blue and the man on the moon When you comin’ home dad? I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then son You know we’ll have a good time then
My son turned ten just the other day He said, “Thanks for the ball, Dad, come on let’s play Can you teach me to throw”, I said “Not today I got a lot to do”, he said, “That’s ok” And he walked away but his smile never dimmed And said, “I’m gonna be like him, yeah You know I’m gonna be like him”
And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon Little boy blue and the man on the moon When you comin’ home son? I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then son You know we’ll have a good time then
Well, he came home from college just the other day So much like a man I just had to say “Son, I’m proud of you, can you sit for a while?” He shook his head and said with a smile “What I’d really like, Dad, is to borrow the car keys See you later, can I have them please?”
And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon Little boy blue and the man on the moon When you comin’ home son? I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then son You know we’ll have a good time then
I’ve long since retired, my son’s moved away I called him up just the other day I said, “I’d like to see you if you don’t mind” He said, “I’d love to, Dad, if I can find the time You see my new job’s a hassle and kids have the flu But it’s sure nice talking to you, Dad It’s been sure nice talking to you”
And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me He’d grown up just like me My boy was just like me
And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon Little boy blue and the man on the moon When you comin’ home son? I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then son You know we’ll have a good time then”

Terrifying Love

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I have always struggled with fear. When I was dating, I was afraid of giving my heart to the wrong kind of guy and getting hurt. Now that I’m happily married, I’m terrified of losing the man I love to sickness or an accident. I would tell myself that there’s nothing to worry about and everything is going to be fine but I’ve known too many people who have gone through tremendous heartache to in any way believe that I’m somehow immune to hurt and loss.

When Darren and I were dating, I almost broke up with him because I thought he was too good to be true and there must be something I don’t know that will break my heart down the road. I almost missed the best thing that’s ever happened to me because of fear. Love takes tremendous vulnerability. Love means opening your heart and life up to someone in the most intimate way not fully knowing how that person will respond or how careful they will be with your heart and life. But if you ever want to really love someone, you must be willing to take this leap of faith. You must have the courage to take risks, to love even though love opens your heart and life up to vulnerability and the chance of excruciating pain–the risks must be taken to know both the heights and depths of love.

Now that Darren and I are married and I no longer worry that’s he’s going to hurt me, I still fear losing him. I have never had so much to lose and now such a loss seems unbearable. But in loving Darren and giving my heart to him, I have learned one thing: If I lost Darren tomorrow, no matter how much it hurts, the hurt is worth the joy of having loved him. If we have but a day left together, I would still have married him three years age. The agonizing loss is worth the immense joy.

Don’t be afraid to love. Even if you get hurt, don’t let past hurts and mistakes keep you from future love and happiness. Love is worth the risk.

Have You Tried Love?

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A couple of things I’ve learned about counseling are—1) you can’t help someone unless they want to be helped and 2) usually once someone is ready for help, they already know what needs to be done and just need to get out there and do it. Sometimes people do get lost in the jumble of life and need some direction; sometimes they need a word of encouragement or a good kick in the pants, but for the most part, they don’t need hours of counseling and therapy, they need to get out there and do best what they know they should have been doing all along. Honestly, so much just comes down to love. If you want a better marriage, a better parent/child relationship, a better relationship with coworkers or whoever, loving these people will go so far.

 Love is:

Patient

Kind

Love Doesn’t:

Envy

Boast

Love is not:

Arrogant

Rude

Insistent on its own way

Irritable

Resentful

And does not rejoice at wrong doing but rejoices at the truth

Love:

Bears all

Believes all

Hopes all

Endures all

Love never ends.

So before you give up on a marriage, child, coworker, friend, whoever—try loving them in real actions (not just in thought or word, but in action). It’s hard to fight with someone who is patient, kind, humble, polite, giving, and puts up with you no matter what. It’s nearly impossible to get along with someone who’s impatient, unkind, envious, boastful, arrogant, rude, selfish, irritable, resentful, and doesn’t believe in you. So think about your actions or inactions. What are you telling the people around you by the way you behave around them? Can this problem be solved if you were a little more loving? Probably. It’s worth a try at least, right?

See 1 Corinthians 13