I know I have been away for a while, but the teachers of Texas have been enjoying my ramblings, so I haven’t had much of a chance to write them down. I am back now (Thank GOD!) in beautiful Colorado ready to return to a ‘normal’ish life and writing schedule… So now back to my thoughts;)
Been thinking a lot about love lately. Yes LOVE. That thing I used to see as the romantic airport reunions when Jeff and I dated long-distance and he greeted me with roses. That vision of me patiently baking cookies with the kids standing on chairs stirring the dough. Those visions of Jeff and the boys playing baseball in the backyard, wrestling and rough-housing with each other. Those cool memories of my mom and dad flirting with each other. And those things are a part of it—a wonderful part of love that exist fully and perfectly. Just a couple of weeks ago, Jeff picked me up at the airport with 22 beautiful roses plus 2 that were bent in half because they had been used as swords by two very short and handsome gentlemen…. But those beautiful and lovely moments aren’t the big part of love—they might be the only thing that keeps us hanging on sometimes-- but those flowery love moments are just little pockets inside the other part of love that I really want to talk about today.
The love I want to talk about is the love that is full of poo.
Now, the older I get, the more this is true… Love is poo. I didn’t know this when I was younger, and I remember talking to Jeff about it. He said something so romantic to me.
He said, “Love is about sacrifice.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well,” he said as a man who hates country music, “I just mean that I would’ve listened to country music if I’d had to in order to be with you.”
Now when he said that to me 7 years ago, I didn’t realize that he meant that ANYONE who loves must sacrifice. And I was so thrilled that within this relationship of ours, he was willing to be the one to sacrifice. And sadly, I went on believing, as I always had, that it was always the other person’s responsibility to do the sacrificing… not mine.
And then I got pregnant. Let the “Poo Love” begin. No caffeine, no booze, no cold medicine… And while you’re at it, throw up daily for about six months. Then get super fat and have complete strangers tell you rude things while your hormones go crazy and you want to beat them up, but you’re still sane enough to know that you don’t want to be the crazy pregnant lady on the news… Then go through 29 hours of labor to push a baby out of your hoo-ha. Then let him yank on your boobs and get no sleep for the foreseeable future… And finally become round in places that used to be flat and flat in the places that used to be round, and you have……. A tiny human being to love like you have never loved before.
Then try to potty train him. And realize that the only reason that you continually wipe the poo off of his ass and the floor and his clothes and your clothes and the shower curtain and… is because you love him, and you will do absolutely anything that he needs in order to have life the way God intended it.
And when I think about love being about sacrifice, being about not walking out on the people who poo on my carpet because they just don’t know any better, and they’re trying really hard to do it right, but they just keep messing it up no matter what I do… I think about God and His patience with me. Because I know that I have done more than my fair share of crapping on his carpet. More than my fair share of taking the blessings that He gives me and hoarding them or acting like I was the one who created those blessings, more than my fair share of knowing what’s right and doing the opposite… But still, He blesses me. Still, He loves me and cares for me and gives me more than I need… and still… I poo on his floor.
And so, I am realizing that Love—real love-- is more about Poo work than about roses at the airport and baking cookies. I still prefer to get roses and watch the boys play in the backyard, but I know the only reason those moments are so beautiful is because I’ve cleaned the crap off of the carpet. Does that mean that some day I will see the “poo love” as a beautiful part of life too? Does it mean that I will love the sacrifices I make so others can be loved? I don’t know if I’ll ever be that unselfish, but I know I’m supposed to try to be, and wouldn’t life be better if I could look at that pile of poo on the floor and see it as an opportunity to show my love?
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