Love Is...

Love does not always look the way we think that it should.  Most women enjoy a nice sappy, romantic “chick flick”.  It is so very easy for us to get caught up in how romantic and loving the leading men tend to be.  They usually make some huge display of love or even lots of them.  Or within just a few short hours of a movie they crack open their hard shell and jump into love.  All of these things add up to a good romantic movie and entertain us, but in real life love isn’t always shown so obviously.

Please don’t misunderstand, my husband loves me so very much, but his way of showing love is so very different than anything I see in the movies.  It has taken me longer than I’d really like to admit to really see just how much my husband loves me because I have been caught up in looking for the big romantic gestures.  But God made my husband uniquely different.  Once the Lord began to show me the ways in which my husband does show me love, it was an awesome and truly eye opening experience. 

Love isn’t always flowers, romantic dinners, moonlit strolls and all the other clichés that we always assume means we are loved.  It can be standing in Wal-Mart for an extra half hour (a little annoyed at the time) while he researches that vacuum on his phone to make sure that I am not just getting one, but getting a good one!  It’s helping me rearrange my living room a million times until I am happy, because he liked it 20 times ago.  It’s bringing me a Dr. Pepper when I have had a bad day, because that fixes everything.  When he gets my favorite whatever at the grocery store, where he just went shopping so I didn’t have to drag everyone out.  It is when he watches the girls while I go do something alone, so that I can re-charge.  It’s trying to let me sleep in from time to time.  It’s when he remembers something I said I wanted six months ago and gets me the perfect birthday or Christmas present.  It’s that he knows me so well it takes me by surprise. 

So while I do get those obvious gestures of love, the best ways in which my husband shows me his love is not only in those obvious ways.  The most amazing ways I am showed how much I am loved are actually in the seemingly small everyday things that happen!

My encouragement this Valentine’s Day is to take a moment to reflect on your spouse.  Let the Lord show you all the “small” ways you are being shown love each and every day.  Really let yourself see what the Lord is showing you.  He may bring something to mind and your first instinct is to look at that instance as just a normal thing that always happens.  That is the beauty of it, God created us all so differently, it could just look like some quirky thing because that’s who we are.  I mean when we were standing in Wal-Mart while Steven was dutifully researching the vacuum, I admit at the time I was kind of annoyed and just thought, let’s buy this thing and move on!!  It was probably a few weeks later that I realized he wasn’t doing that to make sure money was spent wisely; it was his way of saying I love you and I want to make sure this will work for you. Turns out that vacuum was truly remarkable. So truly pay attention, the smallest and seemingly insignificant things could just be the most significant ways you are being told I love you!!

Setting the Example

As I sit and watch my children swinging.  And as I observed my now four year old riding her first bike on our walk earlier, I seriously wonder where all this time has gone.  I know I was there every day of their lives, minus a few spent with grandparents of course.  But it still seems like it was only yesterday that I had a newborn (now 2) and a 2 year old (now 4).  At that stress induced time, I really wondered how longed those days would last.  I really couldn’t wait for them to be over.  Sure I had moments where I felt blessed.  But over all I just felt overwhelmed.  I didn’t like when people told me how precious these days are.  All I could think was come live in my shoes for a minute.  I really spent so much time wishing for them to grow up, even just a little, so I could have a minute to breathe.  Even now I still have thoughts like that.  People tell me how precious and sweet my girls are and I think you don’t have to live with them all of the time.  But I am beginning to see how I really am missing it.  I mean they are still young and learning.  Of course they will make messes, get into stuff they shouldn’t, fight, cry, and whine; generally do every single thing I wouldn’t want them to!  I have expected them to behave as though they know all the things I know and to be thinking the way I do.  And even as I type that sentence it seems so ridiculous that I would think that!  How could I ever expect two little girls to know everything I do?  How could I expect them to control their anger, when I don’t control mine very well?  How do they know to keep their rooms clean when I don’t?  How can they learn to respect each other when I don’t respect them?  They are a reflection of me, ouch!  They are around me 99 percent of the time, so where do I think they pick up all these attitudes and habits?  Where else?  Me!!  I should be the one who is teaching them what the fruits of the spirit really look like; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Sure I have my awesome mom days, but over all I am not setting a good example of these things at all.  I definitely make sure their basic needs are met, but I fail to go much deeper than that.  I get so caught up in trying to make it through the day.  I don’t think that every single day I could do perfectly, but that’s always where teaching them to have grace on forgiveness would come in handy.  I think a good day is everyone ate well, actually put clothes on (not just stayed in jammies) and we didn’t fight about everything.  I know I have thought a lot that I would not want my kids to be like me.  But in the end, I really can’t just hope that somehow they will learn all of these things magically.  I have to be the one to step up and show them how to live.  Not to just float through life trying to do as little as necessary each day.  I want them to truly live life.  I want them to exhibit the fruits of the spirit in their daily lives.  I want them to love, I want them to know joy, to have peace no matter what the circumstance, to have patience with others and with the Lord, to be kind to everyone, to be good people, to be faithful to the Lord and to anyone they are in relationship with, to have a gentle spirit and to exhibit self control.   The Lord has entrusted me with two very special gifts and I have spent so much time seeing them as a hindrance in my own life.  In a world where everything is at our fingertips and it gets so easy to compare ourselves with everyone else, I want my girls to be so much different.  I want them to be confident in whom they are and not worried about who they are not!  But first, I have to show them how to live like that.  I have to walk as a confident woman.  I have to take the time each day to teach them.  I need to keep my eyes open in order to see the opportunities for those teaching moments.  It is imperative that I quit letting the days go by, and learn how to truly live each day!