On the stairs, seven parts-of-my-heart, from final-born cuddle-baby Nekoda, to first-born man-child Caleb.
Eager to see Daddy's Valentine's Day surprises. Thoughts of roses, chocolates, sweet treats, and matchbox cars.
"So what are we celebrating?"
A chorus of little and big voices: "Valentine's Day, Daddy!"
"And what is Valentine's Day about?"
Six year-old Ian: "About loving Jesus, Daddy."
Kevin and I stop in our tracks, eyes connecting. Did you tell him to say that? No. Did you?
"And...how do we love Jesus, Ian?"
"By loving each other!"
Roses and chocolates and sweet treats and matchbox cars wait on the table downstairs. We all stand, staggered in the stairwell, watching, smiling, eyes filling, hearts overflowing. Even the little ones know: truth has been spoken, from the mouth of child.
To such belongs the kingdom of heaven, He tells us.
So this is love:
Loving Jesus.
Loving each other.
Truth spoken, with childlike faith and simplicity. For Valentine's Day...for the celebration of romantic love...for reflecting His glory in my marriage, it all comes down to this:
Love Jesus.
Love each other.
If I can love Jesus first, then the other will come. If I can love Jesus, if I can receive His love, if I can let His Love fill the broken places in my soul...then, I can love the one He gave me.
Love is not a feeling. Love is an action, a choice, an obedience.
We all know this. But do we know it? Does my knowing bring that truth into my living?
Love is something I do, something I stop doing, something I put on, something I put off, something I give, something I receive.
Love is going beyond the natural feeling and pursuing the Holy Spirit for strength to do the unnatural. To trust a man, when the green-smoke lies of the enemy coalesce to convince me no man is trustworthy. To submit, when Eve-within wages war against my good intentions.
Love is a strange and beautiful, rainbow-reflecting, oil-and-water swirl of conflict and resolution. Love is a cheek-aching night of laughter with treasured friends, sharing stories of first kisses and wedding night snafus and cold-in-the-night, cuddling-for-heat confessions. And love is also wee-morning-hour sobbing and retching and comforting and careening-away and drawing back, and covering it all with love-in-action, fear-ignited fervent prayer. Love is being held when everything falls. Love is sticking it out even when the holding has to be Heavenly Hands, and the free-falling is the waking-nightmare of seeing the hole in my soul that leaks black-bottomless-darkness onto the one He gave me.
Love is consuming, pulling-into-one-another passion of gratitude for the one-given who brings healing to the wounded-raw parts of my heart. And Love is jaw-clenching, fisted-hands determination to press-into-one-another, even when discovering that same given-one also brings wounding to the healing-raw parts of my heart.
Love is knowing there is pain in this world, and accepting God's truth that He is more concerned with perfecting us through the pain, than protecting us from the pain.
Love is believing through the pain, for the perfecting, and still with compassionate arms of love, protecting.
And the gushing-forth, dam-bursting words dwindle to a trickle. Because who can find the words? All just color-prism, fragmented hues of His single-light burning truth of the unmitigated mystery of love.
Loving Jesus.
Loving each other.
So this is Love.
