For the past few months Dad has been sending me copies of early love letters Mom sent to him. From early on in their courtship while they were going to Biola University to early after their wedding when they were separated while Mom was going through boot camp in Houston.
While I was down in Colorado Springs trying to make it through the longest 2 weeks of my life I told Dad that even after seeing him and Mom loving one another so faithfully for 24 years prior, the definition of love was never as clear to me as it was when I saw Dad love Mom through her sickness. Through the chemotherapy, her bald head and her pale complexion and the final weeks of her life.
I remember sitting on the porch of our house and hearing Dad say that in some ways Mom never looked more beautiful to him than she did then. When she needed him the most. I remember sitting there wondering how this could be. Trying to understand the language he was speaking. And I remember realizing that love isn’t some jolt of energy or emotion and it isn’t a quick burst of excitement. Love is more like a flower. A flower that needs nurturing and time. Over time the flower comes to the season when it gets to unfold and reveal all that that time and nurturing accomplished over the years. When the world is able to see that flower for all that it is and gasp at it’s radiance. It’s a time when people have no choice but to redefine love as something so much more than they originally thought it would or ever could be.
It’s in those 2 weeks that the love that my parents shared blossomed into full beauty before my very eyes and my definition of what love should look like was rocked to it’s very core.
