Love is an Apple Core {CELEBRATE This Week: 176}

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! 

Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. 

Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

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It was a busy day, the kind where I eat lunch in my car to make the schedule work. No matter how harried a day is,  I am still committed to living unhurried. So when I eat apples, I'm mindful. I pause and chew and taste.

I realize apple cores are evidence of true love.

In a world where creative dates and big bouquets of roses and gushy affirmations on social media for #mcm (Man Crush Monday) or #wcw (Woman Crush Wednesday) is considered true love, an apple core might seem laughable. The world says love should be fancy and make you happy.

This is a dangerous lie to believe.

Happiness is not a dependable marker of love.

Love is about sticking through the hard, even when the hard isn't happy. 

The truth is, true love doesn't care about personal happiness. It's not egocentric. It cares about offering happiness to another person.

It's apple cores.

Because the reason I have an apple core is because someone else did the grocery shopping late the night before. Someone else left the apple in plain view for the next morning. Someone else put my happiness ahead of his own.

Rarely is true love fancy.

It throws in a load of laundry at 11 pm and stays up to fold it together.
It takes the dog out in the rain.
It changes the sheets after the toddler gets sick in the middle of the night.
It does the dishes.
It makes the coffee.
It bakes cookies.
It runs into town to pick up and drop off and pick up kids.

It believes making another person's life pleasant is more important than personal happiness.

It is unlikely a bouquet of roses with a love note will ever be delivered to my work. The chances of a profession of love for me on social media is statistically impossible. Unless I believe a creative date is when I ask friends to meet us at a favorite bar for dinner and beer, it isn't ever going to happen.

But I have apple cores and the truth about true love: it isn't fancy and it isn't about my happiness.

The truth remains. The more I love in selfless and unprecedented ways, the happier I am.

This is the paradox of love.

Thanks for sharing your celebrations today.


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Writing Small {CELEBRATE This Week: 147}

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! 

Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. 

Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

*****

Andy and I celebrated our 17th anniversary last week. My goodness, we blinked and 17 years flashed past. One of the craft moves I've been practicing in my writing is to write small and specific. It is often the seemingly insignificant details that make the strongest writing. To celebrate while practicing, I've decided to make a list of small and specific details about 17 years of marriage.

• When Andy's mom suggested we go out to dinner for our anniversary, we looked at each other and shook our heads. "We'd rather stay here, with the kids, and you," Andy said. His mom lifted her eyebrows, "I guess that's just how we roll," Andy chuckled, "This is how we want to spend our time, with people."
• Anytime something spills or breaks or makes a mess, Andy is there to clean it up. When I dropped the spaghetti sauce and it covered the floor, cabinets, counter, and even the ceiling, Andy cleaned it up. When someone snaked lines up and down the carpeted upstairs hallway with an entire bottle of hair gel, Andy cleaned it up. Those years when milk spilled every single night at dinner, Andy cleaned it up. When coffee spills in my car, when I drop an egg, when a drink is spilled during movie night, Andy cleans it up -- and never makes anyone feel stupid because of the spill
• When I'm overwhelmed, stressed, and think the world is coming to an end, Andy pats my knee three times, squeezes it, smiles and says, "I'm pretty sure it's all going to work out." When I insist that it won't he laughs and says, "You might be being extreme."
• I make grocery lists; Andy does the shopping. Andy puts away freezer and refrigerator items; I put away the rest.
• I fold laundry; he does dishes.
• I get up early; he stays up late.
• I write; he watches baseball.
• I read; he plays video games.
• I put dinner on the table; he picks up kids from school, practices, and friends' houses.

A marriage is a conversation that goes back and forth, back and forth, for a lifetime. At the end of the day, you'll find us on the couch, with mugs -- maybe frosty, maybe steaming -- choosing to love and being grateful for another good day. Those days line up and you blink and you're collecting days toward 18 years.

Thanks for celebrating....

An InLinkz Link-up

CELEBRATE This Week LXXXIX (89)

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

*****

I turned my Instagram account public. I've been using it to collect & document celebrations. I love it. Please follow me there: @ruth_ayres to find celebrations throughout the week.

*****

One.
My one goal for the summer is making all of the difference. It's made me slow down, reminding me of my One Little Word for the year -- unhurried. I've held their hands in the car and walking to the skate park. I've held their hands in the grocery store and on the couch. I've held their hands saying goodnight and good morning.

I've thought about what it means to hold their hands in the figurative sense. So I've taken an extra breath and listened more. I've ran upstairs for them to grab a forgotten item. I've taken them to the library two extra times.

The most remarkable thing has happened.

They've started holding my hand first.

And I'm reminded of the truth that allows me to believe that just maybe I can be the momma they need. Children need fans. They need people to invest in them. They need to know they're capable and loved and worthy of someone's time.

I hold their hands and somehow it turns into something so much bigger.

Two.

This is the perfect anniversary memory.

This conversation from earlier today.
Jay: Wait a minute! Aren't you guys going to go to do something for your anniversary?
Me: We're hanging out with you guys. Swimming in the rain, riding the boat, eating cake before dinner.
Jay: No, I mean aren't you going to do something just for you guys?
Andy: And miss tubing with you?
Me: And miss the jokes and the fun on the dock?
Jay: You don't wanna go do something grown-up fun?

Andy and I laughed. Nope. We don't wanna be anywhere but right here.

And it reminded me how I waited for this, how we used to imagine summer days with our kids. I expected a little girl with my curls and a son with his eyes. This is not our reality -- nor my dream anymore. Instead, we have so much more than we could have ever imagined.

A daughter who is becoming herself and another who has bold confidence. A son with an extra dose of creativity and another with an extra dose of all-things-boy. We don't know the endless diapers of having four kids within a year of one another, nor did we weather the stress of sleepless nights and rocking them to sleep.

Instead we know how to build forever and how to weave threads into the fabric of a family. We know the how to weather the ugliness of being scraped by the world. We know how to make a family safe.

We know we're in this together. Forever.

I can't imagine a better anniversary gift than this.

Share your celebrations below. Happy Independence Day!

Answered Prayers = Awe

Whenever Andy and I make a major decision, we make sure we are in agreement. I wanted to pursue adoption long before Andy, but we didn't move forward on that journey until we both agreed. He knew it was an affirmative to adopt the girls before I did. We didn't say yes, though, until we both agreed. For Jay, we felt the call at the same time to pursue another adoption.

Our house is another example. We searched for more than two years for a home to buy. It wasn't until we decided to look in this town where we live now that we were in agreement. Looking for two years and then suddenly -- swirl and blink -- and we were homeowners within just a few days of seeing the house for the first time.

Three weeks ago I shared an idea with Andy about a major decision regarding one of our kids. He was totally against it. In fact, I was a little taken aback by how strongly he felt against the idea. I almost took the idea, folded it tiny, and shoved it into the closet in the back of my mind. Maybe I was wrong about this idea.

But it didn't feel right.

So I prayed. I prayed that Andy and I would have the same heart for the situation. I asked for our hearts to be changed, to be in agreement, to be together and aligned with the will of God. I asked two friends to pray also.

I expected my heart to be released, to realize I was being overly sensitive.

I wish I wasn't so surprised this morning when Andy told me he changed his mind. He wasn't against the idea, nor was he just going along because he thought that's what I wanted.

He wanted to think more about the same idea as me.

I don't want to be surprised when God answers a prayer. I pray in faith, expecting God to move. It's not so much that I'm shocked when prayers are answered, but I'm surprised by the way they are answered. In this case, I was sure it was my heart that needed to change.

Perhaps it is awe that I am experiencing.

The Creator of the universe cares about me. He cares about the decisions Andy and I are making for our kids. He cares enough to change hearts in order to lead us in the direction of His will.

Yes, we should stand in awe as prayers are answered and lives are altered.

And I can't help but wonder if perhaps we miss answered prayers because the answer doesn't come as we expect. Sometimes the answer can be a completely different package. God has a history of accomplishing His will in unexpected ways.

The Savior of the world spent his first night on earth in a manger.
David beat Goliath with a sling shot.
Saul went blind so he could see the truth.
Multitudes were fed with two fish and five loaves of bread.

I'm learning to pray continually and expectantly. It is my hope when prayers are answered my surprise with turn to awe. Surprise is an emotion that stems from unbelief.

Awe, however, awe comes from audaciously trusting Jesus and knowing he loves you back.

Love is a Choice

This necklace from Elsie serves as a reminder to choose love.

Love is a choice.

There are days when the choice to love is much more difficult (and a whole lot less appealing) than the choice to be annoyed or turn my back or just give up. Sometimes the choice to love is the harder choice.

Let love be genuine.

Abhor what is evil.

Cling fast to what is good.

Paul inked these sacred words in Romans 12. The truth of the matter is genuine love is hard. It's a breathe in and breathe out choice over and over and over. But the rest of the truth is I am never, not-ever, sorry when I choose love.

I think Paul was talking about celebration when he wrote, Cling fast to what is good. It's about holding tight to the good -- finding the celebration in the thick of the trouble -- and clinging fast, with white knuckles.

It's celebration that saves.

Chances are, right now there's a relationship in your life that's hard. We're human and it's inevitable that there is a person (maybe a spouse or maybe a daughter or maybe a friend or maybe someone else) who is hard to love. There's someone like that right now in my life. And tomorrow there will be someone and next week there will be someone. We are called to love. If I let love be genuine, then I find the celebrations...

And I cling fast to what is good.