happily-ever-afters

“Sometimes it’s not about who you’ve been with, it’s about who you end up with.”
Pam Halpert, “The Office”
Here’s to “one of these days…”

patience

100 Years by Five for Fighting

I'm fifteen for a moment
Caught in between ten and twenty
and I'm just dreaming,
counting the ways to where you are.

I'm twenty-two for a moment
She feels better than ever
And we're on fire
Making our way back from Mars.

Fifteen there's still time for you
Time to buy and time to lose.
Fifteen
There's never a wish better than this
When you only got a hundred years to live.

I'm thirty-three for a moment
Still a man but you see I'm a they
A kid on the way
A family on my mind.

I'm forty-five for a moment
The sea is high
and I'm heading into a crisis
Chasing the years of my life

Half time goes by
Suddenly you're wise
Another blink of an eye
Sixty-seven is gone
The sun is getting high
We're moving on.

I'm ninety-nine for a moment
Dying for another moment
and I'm just dreaming
Counting the ways to where you are

Fifteen there's still time for you
Twenty-two I feel her too
Thirty-three you're on your way
Every day's a new day.

Fifteen there's still time for you
Time to buy and time to choose
Hey, fifteen there's never a wish
better than this
When you only got a hundred years to live.

everything

Everything lyrics
Songwriters: Michael Buble; Alan Chang; Amy Foster-Gillies

You're a falling star
You're the getaway car
You're the line in the sand
When I go too far

You're the swimming pool
On an August day
And you're the perfect thing to say

And you play it coy
But it's kinda cute
Oh when you smile at me
You know exactly what you do

Baby don't pretend
That you don't know it's true
'Cause you can see it
When I look at you

And in this crazy life
And through these crazy times
It's you, it's you
You make me sing
You're every line
You're every word
You're everything

You're a carousel
You're a wishing well
And you light me up
When you ring my bell

You're a mystery
You're from outer space
You're every minute of my every day

And I can't believe
That I'm your man
And I get to kiss you baby
Just because I can

Whatever comes our way
We'll see it through
And you know
That's what our love can do

And in this crazy life
And through these crazy times
It's you, it's you
You make me sing
You're every line
You're every word
You're everything

And so la la la la, la la la
So la la la la, la la la

And in this crazy life
And through these crazy times
It's you, it's you
You make me sing
You're every line
You're every word
You're everything

You're every song
And I sing along
'Cause you're my everything
Yeah, yeah

So la la la la, la la la
So la la la la, la la-la-la, la la la

hopes and dreams

COLOR MY WORLD (Chicago)

As time goes on I realize
Just what you mean to me
And now, now that you're near
Promise your love
That I've waited to share
And dreams of our moments together
Color my world with hope of loving you

friendship

“Lucky”
Songwriters: Colbie Caillat, Timothy Fagen, Jason Mraz

Do you hear me? I'm talking to you
Across the water across the deep blue ocean
Under the open sky, oh my, baby I'm trying

Boy I hear you in my dreams
I feel your whisper across the sea
I keep you with me in my heart
You make it easier when life gets hard

I'm lucky I'm in love with my best friend
Lucky to have been where I have been
Lucky to be coming home again
Ooh ooh ooh

They don't know how long it takes
Waiting for a love like this
Every time we say goodbye
I wish we had one more kiss
I'll wait for you I promise you, I will

I'm lucky I'm in love with my best friend
Lucky to have been where I have been
Lucky to be coming home again

Lucky we're in love in every way
Lucky to have stayed where we have stayed
Lucky to be coming home someday

And so I'm sailing through the sea
To an island where we'll meet
You'll hear the music fill the air
I'll put a flower in your hair

Though the breezes through trees
Move so pretty you're all I see
As the world keeps spinning 'round
You hold me right here, right now

I'm lucky I'm in love with my best friend
Lucky to have been where I have been
Lucky to be coming home again

I'm lucky we're in love in every way
Lucky to have stayed where we have stayed
Lucky to be coming home someday

Ooh ooh ooh
Ooh ooh ooh, ooh

togetherness

"Better Together" Jack Johnson

There is no combination of words I could put on the back of a postcard
No song that I could sing, but I can try for your heart
Our dreams, and they are made out of real things
Like a, shoebox of photographs
With sepiatone loving
Love is the answer,
At least for most of the questions in my heart
Like why are we here? And where do we go?
And how come it's so hard?
It's not always easy and
Sometimes life can be deceiving
I'll tell you one thing, it's always better when we're together

Mmm, it's always better when we're together
Yeah, we'll look at the stars when we're together
Well, it's always better when we're together
Yeah, it's always better when we're together

And all of these moments
Just might find their way into my dreams tonight
But I know that they'll be gone
When the morning light sings
And brings new things
For tomorrow night you see
That they'll be gone too
Too many things I have to do
But if all of these dreams might find their way
Into my day to day scene
I'd be under the impression
I was somewhere in between
With only two
Just me and you
Not so many things we got to do
Or places we got to be
We'll sit beneath the mango tree now

It's always better when we're together
Mmm, we're somewhere in between together
Well, it's always better when we're together
Yeah, it's always better when we're together

Mmm, mmm, mmm

I believe in memories
They look so, so pretty when I sleep
Hey now, and when I wake up,
You look so pretty sleeping next to me
But there is not enough time,
And there is no, no song I could sing
And there is no, combination of words I could say
But I will still tell you one thing
We're better together.

bound

"Love is not blind; that is the last thing it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind."
G. K. Chesterton

parenting

“You don’t love me!”
How many times have your kids laid that one on you? And how many times have you, as a parent, resisted the urge to tell them how much? Someday, when my children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates a mother, I’ll tell them:
I loved you enough to bug you about where you were going, with whom and what time you would get home.
I loved you enough to insist you buy a bike with your own money even though we could afford it.
I loved you enough to be silent and let you discover your friend was a creep.
I loved you enough to make you return a Milky Way with a bite out of it to the drug store and confess, “I stole this.”
I loved you enough to stand over you for two hours while you cleaned your bedroom, a job that would have taken me 15 minutes.
I loved you enough to say, “Yes, you can go to Disney World on Mother’s Day.”
I loved you enough to let you see anger, disappointment, disgust and tears in my eyes.
I loved you enough not to make excuses for your lack of respect or bad manners.
I loved you enough to admit that I was wrong and ask for your forgiveness.
I loved you enough to ignore what every other mother did or said.
I loved you enough to let you stumble, fall, hurt and fail.
I loved you enough to let you assumes the responsibility for your own actions at age 6, 10, or 16.
I loved you enough to figure out you would lie about the party being chaperoned but forgave you for it—after discovering I was right.
I loved you enough to accept you for what you are, not what I wanted you to be.
But, most of all, I loved you enough to say no when you hated me for it. That was the hardest part of all.

Erma Bombeck

the worth of a soul

There are those who believe God to be a vengeful God, standing by, watching our every move waiting for a reason to throw down His wrath upon us like a strict and angry parent. But God is not standing by to punish us. He is standing by to bless us, because we matter to Him. He will bless us according to our desires, not just our needs. If we believe this, we can open our arms to receive all that He has for us, all that we desire. If we don’t believe this, we shrink away, believing ourselves to be undeserving, unworthy. We ourselves, because of our lack of understanding, don’t allow His blessings to come to us.

The key, then, to having all the good we want, is in realizing our worth to God. Our worth isn’t something we can earn, it just is, because we are His. Unfortunately, many of our earthly relationships inhibit our understanding of this principle. As children we learn that we aren’t good enough, we learn to be ashamed of who we are and we come to believe no one could possibly love us unconditionally. Perhaps we enter into a marriage relationship that beats us down emotionally. How can we possibly understand God’s love; how can we possibly believe He wants to bless us according to our desires? We struggle to develop faith in Him. We may come to believe that He CAN bless us, but miss the deeper level of faith, believing that He WILL bless us.

In our relationships, all of them, even the casual chance meetings with strangers, we should be helping each other realize our worth to God. We should be saying, in our words, our deeds, our gentle kind ways, “You matter to me because I know you matter to God.”

Then, perhaps, we can begin to have the courage to turn to Him for our needs and our desires, knowing He will answer us in one of three ways: “Yes!” “Yes, but not yet…” “I have something better in mind. Trust me, you will be very happy.”

the sum of my hopes and dreams

“On the day you were born all my hopes and dreams became a possibility, and each year that passes brings us closer to their reality.” Francesca

little things

Love from a man’s perspective:
Love is climbing out of a warm bed at night and checking to see if all the doors are locked when you think you hear something.
Love is giving you the slice of pizza with two pieces of pepperoni on it when I love pepperoni.
Love is acting excited over a $72 piece of needlepoint canvas you bought when we both know you haven’t finished the quilt, the pillow top, the kitchen curtains and the latch-hook rug.
Love is being mad at the kids the same time you’re mad at them.
Love is moving the car seat up as far as it will go when I get out, so you don’t have to do it.
Love is painting the room together and letting you use the roller once in a while while I do the windowpanes.
Love is never remembering which birthday you’re celebrating.
Love is never going on a diet when you’re fat.
Love is refraining from telling you how the thermostat works.
Love is a lot of little things that add up to caring. It doesn’t always add up to three little words. Sometimes, it adds up to six: I got your tank filled up today.

Erma Bombeck

power

Love is a very powerful thing. It is easy to be afraid of that power, to shrink away from it because you don’t know how to handle it. It is also easy to want to control that power by trying to control the person in your life who has that kind of power over you. But controlling each other has no place in a loving relationship. Controlling is the response of insecurity and fear. Love’s power must be free in order to grow, it must be free to be effective.

generosity

“Generosity is one of the hallmarks of a loving person. Generosity is doing more than is necessary, keeping an open heart, not measuring the consequences, and operating from the expectation that you will not have been a fool for having been so easy with your resources, whatever they are. It really is true that the more you give, the more you get. So be a generous friend, lover, sweetheart; be a generous parent, a generous child. You will fill the lives of others and be rewarded yourself as you realize the riches you have to give.”
Daphne Rose Kingma

how much do I love thee...

How can we measure the love we have…
On a scale of one to ten we could estimate a number: 9.99. We could measure it in terms of distance: “I love you to the moon and back”. We could measure it in dollars or mathematically, “I love you googolplex”. To which one could always respond, “But I love you more!” “But I love you more-ther!” “And I love you more-thest.” What it really means is that I can’t imagine loving you any more than I do at this moment, or maybe rather, I can’t imagine ever loving you less, for true love is a growing thing.

us

Hallmark’s latest ad says: “Valentine’s Day is not for saying I love you, it’s for saying I love us. I love who we are together, how we’ve grown from our first nervous conversations to the us we have become.”
And so I celebrate us: all the wonderful relationships that bring so much joy: all the brothers and sisters, parents and children, friends and neighbors, as well as the lovers… thank-you!

the beginning and the end

"It is love that fashions us into the fullness of our being--not our looks, not our work, not our wants, not our achievements, not our parents, not our status, not our dreams. These all are the fodder and the filler, the navigating fuels of our lives; but it is love: who we love, how we love, why we love, and that we love which ultimately shapes us. It is love, before all and after all, in the beginning and in the end, that creates us."
Daphne Rose Kingma

forgiving

"Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit."
Peter Ustinov

"It has been said that the continuation of the species is due to man being forgiving."
The Mahabharata

Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been different.

Love... keeps no record of wrongs.

loving the children

“Loving our children means honoring their identities. It means believing that they are individuals in the process of becoming, who have talents and abilities that may exceed in scope and dimension the powers we ourselves possess. Loving our children means that rather than squashing these miraculous gifts we will stand in reverence of them, and at such a distance as to give them air and light enough to blossom.”
Daphne Rose Kingma

visibility

“The person who loves you will see you—not just how you look, but who you are inside, what makes you joyfully happy, what prickles your heart, what, in private, your dreams are made of.
“Because the person who loves you sees you, you can reveal yourself even more. Because he sees your great kindness, you can show him the scars; because she sees your pure heart, you can show her the frailties you try to protect and obscure.
“Seeing is receiving. To see another human being is to take him or her in completely, through the windows of your eyes, to the chambers of your heart and the castle in your soul.”
Daphne Rose Kingma

response

“Love is response, the answering back with your body, your mind, your words, your kisses, your touches, and your looks to the joy, delight, anguish, heartache, good fortune, curiosity, achievement, disappointment, and exaltation of the person you love. Response is the echo of one soul to another, the endlessly outwardly rippling circles that what has been felt, said, done, or left undone by your beloved has been made real to you by your response.”
Daphne Rose Kingma

tireless

“Who travels for love finds a thousand miles not longer than one.”
Japanese proverb

light

“Love is light, the huge mysterious power that enlivens not only our spirits but all of creation around us. The light that falls into our lives because we love and are loved is the light that will truly illumine us forever. It is the star we follow to stumble on magic, the moonlight of incredible romance and unbelievable passion, the sunlight of healing and growing, of spiritual well-being.
“It is the light that enters our eyes when we behold the ones we adore, the light we create with our words, with the radiance of our spirits, with the whole beauty of our lives. Love is the light in which we live and breathe and love and dream. Love is the light that will fall on us, now and forever.”
Daphne Rose Kingma

gifts immeasurable

“I don’t have a gift for you…”
“Things are complicated, you would give me a gift if you could.”
“They are complicated, still…”
“If you could give me anything, what would you give me?”
“I have thought about this a long time. If I could give you anything, I would fashion a ring for you out of string. If you got an envelope in the mail and all it had in it was a ring made of string, would you know it was from me?”
“Yes, I would know.”

She thought on the gifts he had given her, a few simple things that fit into a shoe box. There were photographs, his drawing on a napkin, ticket stubs, a mint wrapper, hotel room key… There was half of the rock he picked up at a favorite spot from their past. How she treasured that rock, treasured everything! They were tokens that proved it wasn’t all just a dream, their love was real, he was real. She thought of the memories he had given her, sweet memories of times together; the surprise plane ride, the day he carved their initials in a tree, their long walks, talks, laughing. She could feel his skilled hands massaging her aching feet. She thought of his letters, memorized from their re-reading. She thought of what his love had done for her, how it had healed her broken spirit, renewed faith in herself. His love had given her hope for the future, courage to escape her pain and freed her to be her truly wonderful, authentic self. How could he possibly know the extent of the gifts he had given her?
And yet, he did know, for she had done the same for him.

more than we are

“Love calls us into being as the highest expressions of ourselves, makes us servants and saints, confessors and healers. When we love, we have no choice but to enlarge our definition of ourselves. Because of love we become not only more than we are but more than we ever intended to be.”
Daphne Rose Kingma

random prayers of kindness

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale tells of his habit of praying for people as he passes them. He realized one day as he passed someone that that brief fraction-of-a-second encounter was probably the only time their paths would ever cross. He wondered how that man’s life would turn out, and offered a prayer for him. He started praying for other strangers, the woman hanging out laundry for a large family, the homeless man, the child. It became a life-long habit, and part of his character.

I started following Dr. Peale’s example two years ago and have been impressed with the results. Of course I don’t know the effect of my prayers on the individuals for whom I pray, but I have seen an interesting change in myself. I find I am more aware of those around me; I take notice of people who would otherwise go unnoticed. I find I care more about others, wondering at what struggles they are facing; I am drawn out in compassion for them. Often the noticing and the caring lead to opportunities for random acts of kindness, a sweet connection between strangers, a loving thing, really, and something we’ll never get enough of in this world.

in season

“Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within the reach of every hand.” Mother Teresa

exquisite freedom

Love’s Exquisite Freedom,
by Maya Angelou

Love arrives;
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet, if we are bold
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity.
In the flush of love’s light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet, it is only love
which sets us free.

love is...

“Love is at the heart of every action, interaction, relationship, need, conflict, resolution, endeavor, possibility, and outcome in life. We move toward love. We live for love. Love is our breath, our goal, our source, and our best medicine. Love is the sound between sounds, the eye in the midst of seeing. Love is who we are and how we are and why we came to be. Love is at the center of everything.”
Daphne Rose Kingma

And so begins my February tribute to love…