This is love

If you spend much time, or any time at all really, consuming what our society puts out, you'll have a pretty skewed view of what love really is.  You'll see weddings followed quickly by divorces, and in some cases, without the slightest bit of sadness about the breaking of the vows that were just spoken.  You'll see people decide to give up on each other when they're just not "feeling" it any more - this applies to siblings, parents and children, and friends, too, and not just spouses, from what I've seen. 

My husband and I have been married 8 1/2 years.  We have been through a lot in those 8 years and we have certainly seen days that we didn't feel like loving each other.  But we make the choice to do just that.  We continue to make choices every day to ACT with love toward each other, to prioritize the other, and to respect the other as an individual and as a person who has as much stake in our each others' lives as we do in our own.

If you are wondering what that looks like, let me just give you a little picture of how that has played out for us quite recently.

This is love:

My Daniel is extremely busy and working very hard in an Army leadership course right now and is 30 minutes away from home.  He's had little sleep and much stress.  He could have easily asked me to have someone else pick Lucas and me up from the airport last night (our flight arrived at an airport an hour away at 9:30).  He, instead, joyfully picked us up and gave up much of his precious little sleep.  He slept for a few hours at home and then got up at 4:30 to be at unit PT this morning.  Last weekend, while he was home for a few hours, he spent his time cleaning bathrooms, washing sheets, and making sure every dish was washed and put away and every stray book or piece of mail was organized, so that I'd come home to a clean house.  He stopped at home on the way to get us and, while he was there, put some fresh flowers in a vase for me, left me some dark chocolate M&Ms,  and made sure there was a loaf of bread, a half gallon of milk, some half & half for my coffee, and (for some reason, the most touching of all to me) a new bottle of apple juice for Lucas in the fridge.  He knows me and our son, he knows what we need and what we like, and he took the time to make sure we would be okay.  He is a provider and a protector of us, often times at the expense of his own ease and pleasure.  He's surely exhausted today, but he'll tell you that it was worth it because he truly believes that we are.

I have a good man, and I thought you should know it.