Love Is Everything

Love.

One of my favorite topics.

I’m big on it.

I’ve been in various stages and ages of love with the same man for nearly 34 years. I loved him intensely way back when. I love him intensely now. We met in high school, went to nearby colleges, and married when barely in our twenties. We had a mortgage at age twenty-five and three babies before I was thirty.

It was those babies, as they grew, developed and became the people they are now, who taught me about the greatness, the hugeness, of love. With each one, I wondered “Could I possibly love another person to the degree that I love this one?” And as each one came into being, I experienced the expanding nature of love.  If one is open to the possibility, love is never-ending, unlimited, and I think, eternal. It grows and it grows and it grows, if you let it.

Through some challenging times as the matriarch of a family, I learned, among other valuable lessons, the wonder and truth of unconditional love.  I learned that people aren’t necessarily their actions or their choices; and that it’s my duty, indeed my blessing, to love them regardless of the path they walk in the world. This wasn’t an easy lesson. It took staring into the chasm of near-death to soften my heart and my soul. How lucky I am that they did. Selah.

As my children bring others into their lives and into our shared world, my love is extended. How can I not love someone who so clearly loves my child? Or someone my child so deeply loves? It grows this way, love. It extends to others and surprises us with its intensity. The world, I’ve learned, is filled with people I do love, could love, would love.

As I age,  I realize and recognize a love that always is, a love that encompasses my essential self. I feel deeply for people I’ve long-known, as well as some I’ve newly met. I feel connected to others in a way that makes me wonder about life here and now, and life in the past and in the future. I consider the possibilities that I knew and loved in another way, in another time and place, in another life and realm. I thrill at the ongoing, undying qualities of love, leading forward and backward across the spectrum of existence.

When inclined to judge or begrudge, I remind myself to love. I’m better in every way when I function this way. I feel love and know it’s what I was created to feel, what I’ve evolved to be, what I AM.

I love Love.

And I love this Erica Jong quote:

“Love is everything it’s cracked up to be… It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.”

So I will continue to fight, and try to be brave, and risk all that I have, for the glory of love. Because it is everything it’s cracked up to be… and then some.