L is for Love

A bit cliche, I suppose, but I wished to write about love for the L blog. Mainly about how love matures and grows with wisdom and time.


Most of us grow up knowing a parent's love, whether it be from a biological parent, or someone who took over that role. This love is a support to us in our darkest adolescent years, and helps us to understand who we are becoming. This love is always there for us, no matter what dastardly deeds we may accomplish. This love is never in question and is often taken for granted.


As we grow a little older, we begin to develop friendship-love. This love we save for a few select friends. It is tested by harsh words and hard truths, but in the end is only strengthened to become nearly unbreakable. We may move away from our friends, we may hardly talk to them, but we know that they are only a phone call away. When we speak to them, it is as if no time has passed and there is no distance between us. This love never fades and only dies when we both do.


Then we turn our attention to romantic-love. We search for our soulmate, the one person who mirrors the best of us, who knows our skeletons and chooses us anyway. This love endures through the days where we are sick with the flu, hair a mess, unwashed, irritable, wearing pajamas and fuzzy slippers. This love is grown and takes both to slave at it night and day to have it mature. This love is tested like no other and is most often broken before it is tendered. This love cuts more than any knife, hurts more than any wound, and is more rewarding than the highest achievement ever dreamed. Most often this love is given up on as hopeless; once the heart is broken, one or the other leaves it on the wayside. This love can build on bitterness and sharpen defeat. Yet this love can be the most unselfish and giving of all. It can soften the hardest heart and create any bond. This love is the hardest to keep and the hardest to give up. It goes beyond "I do" and "You did this to me!", and becomes old, wrinkled, and senile. It is warm summer nights, wafting breezes, ocean sunsets, starlight, magic, and fulfillment. It is everything to have and the toughest to hold. It is all-consuming and wonderful to behold.


And, finally, there is the reversal of parent love. We ourselves become parents and experience the love we so selfishly ignored as children. It is instantaneous and begins before we ever meet our children. It starts as a butterfly's wings and develops into a future of hope. We savor it, cherish it, and know that our hearts will be broken over and over. We willingly enter into it and are daily reminded of our choice. Sometimes we regret it--until we are wrapped in little arms, given little hugs, and slobbered with little kisses. It is the little voice saying "I love you" and the wonder-filled gaze in a little face. We re-discover our world in the love of our children.


Love surrounds us and completes us. I thank God that I am able to love!