Sunday, November 5, 2017

What is love?

What is love?  Love has so many different levels.  There is loving pizza and ice cream.  There is loving Grey’s Anatomy and a glass of wine. There is loving your dog, cat, pony or goldfish.  There is the love between best friends and the million secrets you share.  There is the love you have for your kids, even when they make you feel like putting them for sale on the black market.  And there is the love you have your partner in life.  


And even that love has so many levels.  I love my spouse, but I love him a million different ways. There is that contented, affectionate, I love to cuddle kind of love.  The love you feel when you cuddle next to each other on the couch and watch a movie under a warm fuzzy blanket.  The kind of love when you put on your warm clothes and go view Christmas lights together.  Or the rain is coming down and you stand in the kitchen making soup and cookies for your family.  The kind of warm and fuzzy love that makes the world seem right and everything feels just a little bit better.  


There is that fierce love.  That love that shows it's face when you feel your loved one be threatened or you see them hurting.  The kind of love that makes you want to take on the world, jump in front of a speeding bullet or go all Top Gun on anyone who would dare to hurt your man.  This is also the love you feel when that green monster, jealousy, rears his ugly head.  It’s a fierce, overwhelming and sometimes scary love.  


Then there is that dreamy love.  This is the one I catch myself getting wrapped up in.  When you can’t stop staring at the one you love and just reflecting on how lucky you are.  Where you thank God for putting the two of you together.  When you think back over to that first kiss, that first date, that first time you said the “l” word.  Dreamy love has me imagining us at that elderly couple that helps each other up the stairs, sits on the same side of the table, splits a sandwich and holds hands.  I’m a dreamer at heart, dreamy love is one of my favorites.  


But of course who doesn’t love that passionate love.  That can’t get enough, can’t catch my breath, butterflies in my stomach kind of love.   The love that takes kisses and turns them from “hey you’re home” to the take your breath away kind.  It’s that “can’t live without him/need her” kind of love.  People sometimes refer to it as “puppy love” and say it doesn’t last.  But in the good relationships, in the really lucky ones, it just keeps growing.  


Everyone loves the goofy kind of love.  Where you steal the last cookie when the other isn’t looking.  When you tease, you tickle, you play tricks, you have fun with each other.  You giggle, you laugh and there is nothing like the joy it gives you to have that silliness with the one you love.  


There is another very special kind of love, the comforting kind.  The kind that wraps you up in their arms the minute that life gets tough but also the times when life is great.  It’s the heart that listens when you are worried, scared, happy, angry or overwhelmed.  It’s the person you discuss your bills with, but also the one you talk about your beliefs in who you are, who is watching over you and what your goals are in life.  It’s long talks, prayers, and making it day by day.

When all those kinds of love come together and you find your person, it is that once in a lifetime kind of love.  It’s the kind of love I had stopped believing in but still dreamed about.  I was settling, the way lots and lots of people settle all across the world all the time.  I didn’t believe in all the different kinds of love.  I settled for one or some of one some of the time. But I had a good friend who convinced me that you can have all kinds of love, wrapped up in how you feel for one person.  She was there to tell me that I didn’t have to settle.  She was right.   Fight for love.  Fight for that all encompassing, multi level kind of love.  Life isn’t easy, but some things in life are definitely worth fighting for.  Love is one of those things.  

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