Love is in the heir

“I love you.” Everyone says it.  Not everyone says it the same.

As a father, I say it often. So often that the phrase may border on cliché. That isn’t to say that I don’t mean it, because I do. It also does not mean that I shouldn’t say it, or that I should say it less often.  Because I do love my children. And I love my wife. But if I called one of my siblings up, or even my parents, talked for a bit, and ended the conversation with “I love you”, they would probably hang up and start wondering how long the doctors had given me to live.   None of us grew up saying it or hearing it. That doesn’t mean we grew up unloved. None of us grew up feeling unloved either.  Now that I have a family of my own, I love my family. And I say that I love them, and they tell me they love me too. It’s a big difference from when we grew up, since we never said it. But that’s the only difference. Love isn’t what you say, or even what you feel. Words are what you say, and emotions are what you feel.

Love is what you do.

Love is filling a lunch box that you’re not going to eat.

Love is starting a fire before you go to work when you won’t be there to enjoy it.

Love is getting a glass of water, when you aren’t the one that’s going to drink it.

Love is teaching love to those who will love others.

I think my children are beginning to understand what love is. Although the words may be more of a filler. Something to say to fill the quiet, or a phrase they say when they don’t know what else to say. But that’s okay. That’s what words are for.  Dale Carnegie once said that your name is the sweetest and most important sound in any language. So imagine a daddy’s heart when his children choose to use the name “Daddy” instead of Mickey mouse or Lightning McQueen, followed by “I love you” instead of “Can I have candy”, or “Isaiah pushed me!”.

My quest towards spiritual enlightenment compels me to compare my own relationship with my children, and my own relationship with God, since I am His child. I end this entry wondering to myself, as much as it may please Him to hear it, is saying “I love you Father” just something I say to fill the silence? Do I say it because I am going to follow-up with “I want candy”? Or do I have any action to support it. I feel emotion. I use my words. I must do. So that when I say “I love you, it is the sweetest sound He can hear from me, and let it pair like a sweet wine with the deeds that I do.

Love,

-Jake