Today

...Alex and Jeff left this morning for their first father-son camping trip. I love watching the two of them together. Jeff is a man of few words, but his actions speak volumes to our son.

...I looked at my "little girl" getting ready to go out for our "ladies' lunch", and realized that she is growing more than just in height. She is becoming more responsible and caring, and I see her servant's heart in the way she helps all of us.

...Anderson is laughing and asking to go eat "Mesikin" (Mexican) food.

...I thank God for love. I thank Him for my family. I thank Him for my friends. I thank Him that I get to walk through this life learning from Him what it means to love well, even though that is something I am still learning. Because honestly, when you open your heart to love, you make yourself vulnerable to hurt and pain and loss. But it is worth it. Really living means loving, even if it means hurting. Because protecting ourselves from pain means putting up walls that keep out love, too. And that leads us to be prisoners of our own sin, our own selves, our own preservation. Our Creator loves, and He made us to love.

"There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one,not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness…We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as a way in which they should break, so be it. What I know about love and believe about love and giving ones heart began in this." C.S. Lewis from The Four Loves

 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
1 John 4:7-12

Loving and Learning,