What is Love?

(And not the Haddaway version. Even though every time I say it out loud, I have to start shaking my head to the side a la Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan in Night at the Roxbury.)

I've been doing my fair share of thinking about love and what it meansto me. There are many different types of love - love between you and your partner, your children, your friends, family, etc. But in this instance, I am talking about the love between my husband and me. Dr. Gary Chapman also identifies five Languages of Love, and they are 1) words of affirmation, 2) quality time, 3) receiving gifts, 4) acts of service, and 5) physical touch. I think Nicholas Sparks best sums it up (for me) in this quote:



"Love is more than three words mumbled before bedtime. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day."

I know when I first met Charlie I loved him. Well, alright, I was more infatuated with him, but I knew I had the CAPACITY to love such a man. And then we started dating, and I fell more in love with him. And then on our wedding day, I fell in love again. And it seems with each life event that strings us farther along into the web of our lives, I again fall deeper in love with him. The birth of Ethan, then Riley, the first time I saw him on the Green Ramp when he got home from Iraq - the list goes on.

"I love you" can be very empty for some people. They can be mumbled before we go to work, when we get off the phone, or when we're going to bed. But do we MEAN it? Do we ACT on those words? I think it is far better to be shown that I am loved than told thirty times a day.

And by Charlie's actions, I never have to doubt it. I never have to hear it. Of course we say it to each other every day and we mean it every time, but his actions for the past eight years have shown a loyalty and devotion that supercedes any expectation I may have. I may begrudge him occasionally and grumble how he doesn't offer to vacuum the floor or fold my clothes correctly. But these are just points. They aren't issues. I mean, aside from spending time apart for months on end, we really don't have anything to argue about. And it's wonderful. I'm so fortunate to have a life's partner who doesn't want to argue with me, who works to support the kids and me, and loves me unconditionally. He has loved me at my worst, and that says volumes about him. There may have even been times I was undeserving of love, and there he was, arms open. Don't get me wrong, there have been hiccups. But I don't think the issue of "love" was ever in question. Deployments test the bonds of marriage to the inth degree. (What is that, anyway? "Inth?" Is it a word? Nice I use words that I really don't know the official meaning of.)

For now, physical touch and quality time are out of the question for us, but I love my husband. I wait for him to come home and patienty wait for his phone calls. I keep my phone within hearing distance at all times and get monumentally sad when I see I missed a call. I cry with the doors closed so the kids don't see mommy upset. I try not to let on how miserable I am when Ethan cries for his daddy when he's crying, and he won't let me fix it. I do it because he deserves it. He is worth waiting for.