Love is…
patient, kind, hopeful (I Corinthians 13). Those are the easy answers. Most people won’t disagree with those. They make frequent appearances in weddings and find their way onto our walls, bookmarks, Hallmark cards in various forms of verse.
What about the (much debated) “language” of love? And what to do when feelings of love and actions of humans don’t match? Loving someone can be easy, yes? Getting along through life with them can be tough. Is love ever wrong? Unhealthy? sure. but wrong? I don’t know.
We all yearn to be loved. We all delight in seeing someone’s eyes light up at our entrance. We all like knowing that someone has sought our attention, cares what we think, and has our back. I think we each have a desire to be known, and accepted. As a dear friend once stated, “I’m thankful for friends who know my shit and love me anyway”. I think it’s even deeper than that. It’s letting someone know your deepest thoughts and desires, wishes and dreams, weaknesses and failures. The love comes when the other person cherishes that information. The love comes when that person shares all of that with you. The love comes when you respect each other through it all. I think what kills love is when people stop respecting the information. When the people we’ve opening up to stomp all over our hearts or act like it didn’t mean anything after all.
A few decades ago as a teenager I had already come to a place where I decided I was done. Done. My heart had been broken, falling in love never ended happily ever after and I was done. Pretty jaded for a teen, but maybe that’s what the angst is all about. During this time I came across a book, I still have it. The title is, “The Next Time I Fall In Love”. It has graphs and insight on how we need to share on all levels equally in order to move forward healthfully in relationships. Basically the emotional sharing needs to happen before physical interactions, and the communication needs to continue at the same level of the “lovin’ touchin’ squeezin’ ” or else feelings get out of balance, people feel used, or possibly there is no foundation to build your relationship. This was fabulous information, and thus I kept the book to pass along the great wisdom to others.
Enter Jeremy Davis. A young man in search of relationship advice. Why he sought me out I will never know. But that’s how our story started. He found me during my time of relationship reflection, my time “off”. He was trying to make things work with another girl and wanted advice. And so I gave him all the advice I had at that time. As it turns out it was a whole train-ride’s worth. We followed it up with many long phone calls and a few heartfelt notes. For the record he didn’t follow my advice. He got his heart broken and I helped him put it back together. The rest is 23 years of history. We have history, we have depth, we have great love and respect.
After we had our daughter, Jeremy came up with a parenting goal for us, for her. Our goal is to love her in such a way that she learns how to give and receive love in healthy ways. If we can do that we will have given her a great gift.
Jeremy also said, “It’s not who you love, but that you love”. You heard it here first!
It can hurt to love and not have the feeling returned. It can hurt to love and not be respected. It can hurt to have loved and lose it all. Once you have picked up the pieces, dusted yourself off and continued down your path, don’t forget to love. Don’t give it away, or sell it cheaply. It is a treasure, treat it as such.