Love Looks Like

I have been thinking a lot these summer days about what love looks like. The 3rd anniversary of the fire passed and it made me thoughtful and reflective. The anniversary passes each year with less of a lump in my throat, but each year brings more reflection within my soul about life, about love, about the concept of home. I am not talking about the concept of romantic love only, but just love in general.


I have been pondering how love changes with time in each relationship - with friends, with siblings, with in laws, with parents, with spouses. Love does not look the same with each passing year, it ebbs and flows like the ocean tides as life moves and changes. There are times when it crashes against the shoreline with anger and times when it laps in like a calm wave. Love is constantly changing and we change along with it.


In my own life I think I have finally reached a small state of equilibrium. I know things with continue to change, especially in the next few years, but for now things seem pretty great. I decided to make a small list to remind myself of what love sometimes looks like.


Sometimes, love looks like:


:: accidentally staying up until 2am sitting around the fire with in laws because we were having such a great time catching up and laughing that no one was watching the time


:: seeing and spending significant time with an old friend after many years of phone calls and realizing that everything is exactly the same and everything is different...and both of those realities are ok

:: looking at my husband across the room with a knowing glance - there is so much time  and knowledge in our glances that words often don't need to be spoken at all

:: spending lots of time with my mother in law laughing, talking, crying, and knowing

:: helping friends move chickens when visiting them and not even thinking it is weird because we're friends, and that's what everybody does, right?

:: eating supper with my grandma and catching myself almost breaking down in tears because she is the only grandparent that I have left and I don't want to forget one minute of our times together

:: reaching across the desk at work and holding the woman's hand who is there for a breast biopsy and scared out of her mind, even though I don't know her at all, and having her say thank you and ask for prayer

:: calling my brother and telling him how much I both hate him and love him for getting to have his dreams before I have achieved mine - he's a stinker, that one

:: sitting with my parents outside on their patio in the sunlight and just laughing - I am beyond grateful that seeing them regularly is an option again in my life

:: doing the dishes, cooking the food, putting things in jars and in the freezers because we need to eat well - a gift for ourselves

:: sitting on the couch with Kennan and my cat and realizing that life really doesn't get any better than this


Love. All love. I truly have a blessed life.