Love Shown

   For the past few months I've had a quote on my dry-erase board. I'm pretty sure I read it in a school book, or heard it in art class, or something like the sorts, in a context that was totally unrelated to any realistic life circumstance, but I liked it. It goes:

"Never explain what you can show."

   I took it, and I've been runnin' with it since. The way I see it, that's what life's about in a lot of ways. We learn better if we've been shown an example. And heck, God works that way all the time. He can't just scream His love for us from heaven; rather He shows it to us in huge ways. 

   That's how I wanna be.

   I want people to know I love them, not because I tell them all the time, but because I show them all the time. Especially in today's culture where the word "love" is used more often to describe a shallow affectionate feeling, or one's opinion of an object. I've challenged myself to a form of love that's more meaningful.

   Mama and I had talked about people saying, "I love yadda yadda" so often, that she came up with a new phrase to describe objects or concepts that she really liked: "puffy heart." We used it for a long while, like when we were shopping ("Oh man! I soooo puffy heart this skirt!") or tossing around hypothetical situations ("That is such a great idea! I so puffy heart it,"). It's a dorky phrase, but it got the point across without using "love" in such shallow sentences.

   I still tell people I love them, but I don't just throw it around. I don't go through one day without saying "I love you" to my family members, and there are a few girlfriends of mine that I say it to, too. But I've placed such huge meaning on those words, I don't just say it to anyone. In fact, when I was younger, I made a commitment to myself not to say "I love you" to any man outside of my family until I knew that I knew that I knew that he was the one I'm gonna marry. Just because those three words are so close to my heart, I wouldn't be able to say them to a guy without giving him a huge chunk of the red, blood-pumping muscle beneath my rib cage.

   It really is a fun challenge to show love rather than say it, when I have the right perspective. It forces me to be more creative with ways I show it, especially if I turn it into a hunt to discover the person's love language!

   I got to love on my cousins Hattie, Aubrey, Lillian and Carter with quality time last week:

It was quite the challenge to get all five of us in one picture using my dad's SLR. But we did our best;)

   It was loads of fun to spend the whole day with them! They're growing up soooo fast...!