Love, Redefined

The stores shelves are stocked with candy hearts and roses and TV shows are highlighting candlelit dinners and romantic outings. The cute, romantic stuff (which I love, by the way – proven in a past year’s Valentine’s Day food post) is most certainly one aspect of love, but it certainly isn’t all-encompassing. I’ve been reexamining the ways people have shown me love over the past couple months and the list just goes on and on, no candy hearts included.

Right now, love to me is…

• • a sister who talks to me on the phone every morning from 6:30-7am.
  • a family who opened their home to me for weeks, feeding me, filling a stocking for me, donning my bed with as many comforters as it took to make sure I was warm (that magic number was 3, by the way), and welcoming me into their family traditions with open arms.

• • an entire church body offering me their prayers, homes, meals, hugs, and constant encouragement.

• • parents who spent their Christmas break helping me move, took my cat into their house and are taking the very best care of him since I can’t have him with me at the farm, and who offer their advice and support on a daily basis.

• • Skype dates with my middle sister, brother-in-law, niece, and nephew. I can never get enough of Brianna asking, “Aunt Becky, what you been doin? Are you at the farm? Where are the goats? When are you going to come help us decorate our tree?” and Caden, who has just recently begun saying my name, announcing it repeatedly and enthusiastically when he sees my face on their computer screen.
  • a coworker who walks into work every morning with a huge smile on her face, always making sure I’m okay, checking up on me over weekends, and sending me the most hilarious duck pictures to brighten my days.

• • sweet kids complimenting my cooking so much that they requested that I bottle and sell the “Becky Touch.”

• • a children’s director welcoming me into her dream-that-became-reality and providing me with a home, allowing me to heal in a farmhouse surrounded by loving people and baby goats.

• • friends who I’d lost touch with reconnecting with notes, cards, texts, and messages of encouragement.

• • Laurie. No single word or phrase can incorporate everything she has been to me. She has been love personified. She held me while wept during the darkest hours of my life. She changed plans to be available to me whenever I needed her. She made phone calls for me and ran errands with me when I didn’t have the strength to do them myself. She made sure I was eating and sleeping. She helped me clean, pack, and move. The day she found out I liked Bagel Bites, she went straight to Costco, bought a box, and made them for dinner that same night. She drove me to the airport at midnight on Christmas Day to pick up my mom. She sits by me at church every week. She feeds me dinner, sometimes multiple times a week. She checks in just to make sure I’m okay. She always makes time to listen attentively and without judgement and she somehow always knows exactly what I need to hear and when I need to hear it. When I get stuck in a stress/worry cycle, she knows how to break it and get me moving forward again. She sacrifices time, energy, and so much more to make me a priority. She makes me feel cherished and worthy. If I can be Laurie to one person in my life, it will be a life well-lived.

I hope your life is full of love today (and tomorrow and the next day), however it may manifest itself.