Expressing love, feeling love, writing love, drawing love and are things done frequently but none of them show love. This came to mind while I was scrolling through some blog posts and saw the iconic graphic design of the word love on a post (I haven’t been able to find it to link). Anyhoo, I thought, this design, like the I Heart NY graphic design by Milton Glaser, is an often duplicated image but it in no way communicates what love is. That got me to thinking – how do we show love?
Here are two recent small love actions in my continuing love story with my husband.
#1 – The phone rang during a powerful thunderstorm this morning. I didn’t pick it up. I was on the bed, surrounded by pillows with a cover over my head. I hate thunderstorms! Growing up in St. Louis which has frequent, notorious, and damaging thunder storms, I don’t “play” with storms. I won’t talk on the phone, use the computer or turn on the faucet during T-storms. I find lightning, frightening.
After the storm passed, I went to the phone to see who’d called. It was my husband who’d called to say that he was checking to see if I was okay, that he knows I hate thunderstorms and that he loved me. This is love in action.
#2 – A week or so ago, during a period where we were roiled with uncertainty about husband’s livelihood and just feeling low, I noticed my husband going to work in clothes that were rumpled and to me, broadcast loudly, “I don’t care.”
I got him to pick another shirt, asked him to strip, and ironed the shirt and pants. “You’re too handsome a guy to look like you don’t care,” I said. He thanked me (a little grumpily because I’d delayed his departure). When he returned from work, he said he’d gotten a compliment on how “crisply put together” he looked. He then thanked me for real.
This is love in action.
- Sometimes done because times are good,
- sometimes because it’s just how you do things,
- sometimes to break the ice in a cool time,
- sometimes done to make up after an argument,
- sometimes to find love again,
- sometimes because love has been renewed…
Small loving things we do for our loved ones are important. In one of the self-help books I read a long time ago during a period of drought when I was hoping for love, Dr. Wayne Dyer wrote that the way to renew a love is by being loving. He recounted a man asking him, how do you find love again with a wife who you’ve stopped loving. Dr. Dyer said, “Love her.” I never forgot that (and I apologize that I can’t find the direct quote) But I’m sure you get it.
You find love, renew love, generate love, by loving.
Love in action.