I Know what It Means to Love

This has been an emotional week for me. I have been prone to tears on several occasions: while flipping through our family scrapbooks, while on the phone, while singing songs in church, while reading books and snuggling with my little girl, after skyping with my Grandma, and when someone complimented my shirt. If I didn't know better, I would think I was pregnant. I'm not. I just have a lot running though my mind. And it all comes back to me realizing how much love there is in my life.
I thought I knew what love was when I was growing up, and I did. I grew up in a loving home. Then I thought I knew what love was when I met my husband. And I did. He shows me that every day. Then I became a mom and everything changed for me. The love I had for others was not diminished because I had this other little person that I had so much love for, but this little person expanded my heart, my ability to love and it magnified those feelings that were already in place. Which means, when someone I love hurts, I hurt with them. When someone I love is soaring with positive energy, I soar with them too. These emotions are difficult at best to put into words. I have always cared and always loved. But not like this. And as much as it hurts some times, I cannot imagine life without LOVE in it.

My grandma is in the hospital and things don't sounds too optimistic. I've blogged about her before and although she will likely never see my blog, I wrote it for me and not for her anyway. She knows how special she is to me. I make that known. My grandma is a fighter, but I wonder how much fight she has left in her. I am thankful for the technology that allows us to communicate across the miles that separate us, like speakerphone and skype. It tears me up inside each time I talk to her and only by some miracle, am I able to hold myself together until our conversations are through.  I am so, so, so grateful for the time my little girl and I spent with her just a few weeks ago. I knew that trip was special. The time we spend together always is, but I savored every moment in a way that was different during that stay with her. More hugging, more pictures, more quality time together, just her and I. I don't know that I will get a chance to replicate a visit like that again. As I type through my tears, it is hard to admit that and actually put that thought to words. It is because of the love she has always had for me and my family (and I for her) that my heart aches as much as it does. As much as I wish the pain, the worry, the compassion wasn't so absolutely heart wrenching, I feel these emotions because I understand what it means to love.

And then there is my little girl, who at 21 months old is so much more perceptive than I could have imagined. We were snuggled in a chair yesterday afternoon, reading a book before naptime. And I lost it. As in tears-streaming-down-my-face-gasping-for-air-nothing-pretty-about-it crying. I get choked up every time I read this page aloud in the book  Let Me Hold You Longer by Karen Kingbury:

                        I've watched you grow and barely noticed seasons as they pass
                             If I could hold the hands of time, I'd hold onto your lasts

The book has never caused me to be quite this emotional before. My little girl knew I needed to be hugged a little tighter and gave me one of her "super hugs" with both arms around my neck.  And in church today while we were singing and a tear slid down my cheek, she said to me "Mama, tissue."  Yep, Mama just needed a little tissue to wipe that tear away. The tear that reminded me how much love there is in my life.

~Angela