Love.

Photo Credit: shopbroker_gc via Compfight cc

What popular notion do you think the world has most wrong?

This is easy: LOVE. 

In my mind, love out in the wide world is either too easy or entirely too complicated.

It's too easy in that you can throw the word around and it can be so cheap. You use the same word for "I love you" as you do for "I love lamp". One can mean everything while the other is nonsense. (Albeit hilarious nonsense, but you'll have to watch Anchorman for yourself one day and decide.) It lets the other person do whatever they want, as long as they say those three magic words and make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Love is a cute little flying cupid, blindly striking people with its arrows. TOO EASY.

Sometimes it can get way too complicated because we're going around looking for "the one" to "complete us" which is just wayyyyy too much pressure for one person! Also, sex complicates things and people run around doing it whenever they feel the urge (which is a lot, you'll discover as you grow!) Broken hearts, broken lives, broken marriages, broken homes. TOO COMPLICATED.

The world's view of love is a popular notion that bears little resemblance to my view.

In my worldview, love is a verb.
It has hands and feet and it serves.
It sacrifices itself for the object of its affection.
Love has TEETH.
It is tenacious and it never lets go. And not in a Titanic, Jack-and-Rose way. (There was totally room for two people on that floating piece of wood! But I digress.)

The word for this kind of love in Hebrew is hesed or chesed. It is a covenant love that never goes back on its end of the bargain, no matter what happens on the other side.

This is the kind of love that God has for us.
It is the kind of love that has saved us.
It is the kind of love that we spend our lives practicing and still will never get right.
But it is the kind of love that we must have or forever subscribe to something lesser.

And in the words that we so blithely recite at weddings from 1 Corinthians 13:

"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. 

A Thousand Moments

How did you feel the moment you became a parent?

I guess you'd have to define when that moment was...

THIS?

OR THIS?

Finding out I was pregnant was fantastic because I just knew...I.just.knew. And Daddy was nervous and kept telling me to wait to take the test. As if that would change the result somehow? Ha ha, I think he just didn't want me to be disappointed because I seemed so sure. But honestly, I didn't start feeling like a parent right away after becoming pregnant.



So I guess I'll go with the latter photo. Yes, it was taken mere seconds after you were born. I won't get into too many gory details (yikes) but I will say that 26 hours of labor and 5 hours of pushing and a pair of forceps later...you were finally in my arms!!

I was drugged (after all that, no shame in drugs!) and exhausted and a little traumatized, as were you. I was in awe of the fact that you were real. I just kept looking at your poor swollen little red face and thinking, "He looks exactly like my grandpa!"

Ha! Being a newborn is no picnic. 

But because you bore such a strong family resemblance right away, I knew you were mine. You slotted right into the family.

I don't know if words can adequately describe how I felt about you. It took a few hours/days for the shock and drugs to recede (it was quite a difficult birth, my sizable-noggined one!). But I knew I was in love. I knew I didn't want to put you down. I felt like I was living in a dream for those first few days when you slept so nicely. Of course, very soon you were hungry all the time and waking up to the fact that you weren't in the womb anymore and then the real fun began. 

But those first moments are priceless. A thousand tiny moments make up the whole of how I fell in love those first few hours and days. And I just remember being so amazed with how my life could go from

THIS

TO THIS!!!

And all in a matter of a few (ha!) hours of labor.

And also being in awe of how I would do it all again in a heartbeat to get another sweet baby to love.

Love the Most

Today I'm supposed to write about what I think Daddy loves most about me. How do I know what he loves most? He isn't the type to go around saying, "I love this the most" about anything, so I decided I'd better just ask him. It was a good thing.

My guess at the answer before I asked Dad was that he loves that I'm there and that I love him back! HA! Not the strongest answer in the world.

So, when I did ask Dad, to his credit he couldn't pick one thing (of course!! I'm just so lovable!!). He said I'm smart, funny, "hotness" and a few other things. He might have mentioned that I am a good mom, which was quite nice to hear. I might have to wait til you are an adult, God-willing, until you decide to tell me I was a good mom. ;)

I don't think I could pick one thing I love most about your dad either. I could list a bunch of things, but I think that's a future post, so I won't do it here. But, I do hope we gross you out every now and again by loving each other well in your presence. =)

Photo by Sposto Photography

My Funny Valentine

This is your dad and I when we were newly dating. 8/18/07

Fortuitously, the prompt about how I fell in love or how I knew my spouse was "the one" has fallen on Valentine's Day. Dad and I don't really celebrate because we aren't the "romantical" types with the flowers and the chocolates and whatnot, and yes, we think it is a consumer-driven holiday and all that. However, don't give up on your old parents and think we're just living together in comfort. We definitely still love each other and smack each others' booties and wink at one another and all those crazy things that you will understand more as you get older. =)

The story of your dad asking me out is a great one, but the story of when I knew he was "the one" (even though I don't believe in that concept) is nice and mundane...just like much of our romantic history. 

One day, a few months into our dating, he was really late picking me up from a designated meeting place so that we could go out together. I was sitting in a dark parking lot and starting to get worried. I didn't want to be annoying but was calling and texting him and trying to figure out where he was. It was about twenty minutes or so after the time we said we'd meet and he texted me to say he was just leaving his office...which meant it would be another 20 or so minutes until he arrived!!

When he got there finally he said he had just gotten carried away playing Wii at the office and he didn't have a good excuse and he seemed so low about it and kept apologizing. He seemed very distressed. I asked him if there was something bigger that was bothering him. 

He basically said he was worried that he'd upset me and that he "didn't want to mess things up." I remember being offended at this thought, and nearly shouting, "You can't mess things up, I love you, you dope!" But I stopped myself, because I hadn't even realized that this was how I felt, so I certainly wasn't ready to tell him quite yet!!

I finally got up the courage after acting very ridiculous one night to tell your dad that I was in love with him. We both already knew it and he said he loved me back. When he left my house that night, I cried and cried with joy because I knew I had truly found the man I was going to marry and spend my life with and start a family with and the whole thing. 

A few months later, we got married. 

And look, here we are! A few years later we've got you, and we're thinking about adding a sibling to the brood and we're just livin' the dream. A blessed life!! 

MamaDada

Day three of the 30 day challenge asks me to describe my relationship with your dad.

This is interesting, and fairly personal, but I will give it a go. I guess the best word I could use for our relationship at the moment is "comfortable". 

There are good and bad sides to this assessment. Dad and I are pretty comfy together after marriage, moving across country, being "poor" together, having a kid, surviving cancer...and all in just five short years of marriage! We love each other and we enjoy our life together, being homebodies and hanging out with you.

I guess the flip side of this is that we don't get to do many fun and exciting new things together, and maybe there is such thing as "too comfortable", sometimes. It can get to the point where you just start to assume the other person knows that you love them and there's no reason to remind them! This is untrue, and I think can work on being more intentional in how we love each other in the day to day adventures of life.

I love your Dad for being a godly man who loves and provides for his family and loves Jesus and the church. He loves me in spite of my spitfire ways and because I'm a gorgeous redhead (ha! But true.) You can rest assured that we are committed to each other and to you for the very, very long haul!