A Valentine's Day Meditation





This is my Love Bunny.  Yes, that is its name.  Don't judge.



My guy gave it to me 28 years ago, when he first told me he loved me.  He wanted me to remember that moment, that sweet moment, that first hint that this rather stoic academic I was falling in love with was actually super sentimental. 

Those early years  … Oh gosh, we were clueless.  We were in love, sure, but pretty much always trying to impress each other, which is maybe just committed infatuation?  

Once actual Real Life started happening, everything changed; it was raw and messy and no one was impressed with anyone ever and it was mostly about survival:  3 babies; 5 more in heaven; moves; financial stress and disagreement; family far away;  me: lonely and alone with the kids while he constantly traveled for work; him: lonely and missing us and missing out while he was on the road; the sudden deaths of our fathers; medical scares; scary diagnoses; learning difference diagnoses; job stress; kid drama … Life. 

We got to know each other really well in those years, and not in a romantic, air-brushed way AT ALL.  And we didn’t always like what we learned about each other … I could be a flake; he could be terse … I could be manipulative; he could be passive-aggressive …. We both pretty much insisted on winning an argument, so you can imagine what those arguments were like.

The Love Bunny has lived on our bed through it all.  It has been barfed on, peed on, chewed on by the dogs … It’s no longer fluffy and soft.  It's missing some stuffing, it’s been washed and re-washed and ripped and badly repaired.  It has been a silent witness to hissed arguments and chilling stillness.

But every morning that ridiculous bunny is back on our bed--a reminder of a moment, of a promise.  He loves me, and I love him, even on the days when he’s really not lovable at all, and especially on the days when I’m not either.  It’s the Greek Chorus of our lives … yeah, he can be selfish sometimes, but you love him, remember?  She can be controlling sometimes, but you love her, remember?

He gave me a new Love Bunny on our 25th anniversary.



I was charmed by the first bunny and was also aware that I looked cute when I thanked him for it—trying to charm him as I was being charmed.  This new one?  I was overcome and ugly-cried.  This new bunny represents so much more than the easy words “I love you.”  It represents a life together—all of the things we thought we knew. All of the things we know now.  And all of the things we know we'll know someday, for better or for worse.   A whole life of being known well and loved well.  We are so grateful.



 

“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.”  
Timothy Keller

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Concert Mom

The stage lit up in a way I found overwhelming.  The crowd cheered and I listened to the music and was moved but didn’t know why.  Kids sang along, angrily, ecstatically, and I stood in their midst, tears streaming down my middle-aged face.  I found myself once again in the sacred role of witness and testifier. Four years prior, the first concert not-of-my-choosing that I chose to attend with my daughter was some metal band. I don’t remember who but I remember the night vividly.  It was a classic-to-the-point-of-cliché mother-daughter battle:  she was 14 and NEEDED to see this band, would simply die if she did not.  Her Catholic-school friends were supremely uninterested in seeing this band, so her reasonable, modest proposal was that she, at 14, attend a gritty concert in a gritty part of San Francisco, solo.  I was not 14, and I would simply die if she went alone (I might actually have used the words “over my dead body”).  Impasse. We were in the midst of therapy that is a luxuri
Read more

Lent 2022, Spy Wednesday

Image
Having grown up in a non-litur gical tradition, the various movements of Holy Week are pretty new to me. It makes me sad that I’ve missed out on such depth and rich history. And cool names! Spy Wednesday ... wow. Of course, the “spy” of “Spy Wednesday” is no laughing matter: none other than that great villain of Scripture, Judas Iscariot. The one who betrayed his friend with a kiss. That guy. My friend  @d.a.v.i.d.n.y.c  once taught a class on Judas Iscariot. It was fascinating to learn that the Gospels that were written closer to the actual historical events reported the story of Jesus’ betrayal very matter-of-factly. Only in the later Gospels does Judas start to become the caricature we know and hate. In Mark (written c. AD 66-70) the story of the betrayal is presented in a “just the facts, ma’am” manner. In Matthew (written c. AD 85-90) we get the facts of the story, along with the heart-wrenching moment when Jesus calls Judas his friend, even as he’s being betrayed. In Luke (and it
Read more

Lent 2022, Day 29

Image
  From Nicky Gumbel’s commentary on today’s reading from Luke 8: “I have never met a strong person with an easy past. Faith is tested.” Although I imagine this is not universally true, I think it is mostly true of most people. Stress, hardship, testing, tend to strengthen us. It’s in nature and it’s in human nature. When my kids were small, I used to say that I wished for strength and toughness for them through developed muscles, not from scarring—or as my friend Linda Douglas put it, “we’d prefer that they learn some lessons from the textbook and not the field trip.”   But sometimes the field trips of life are where we learn our most important lessons, where we grow the most. To protect ourselves and our children completely from those field trips, were it even possible, would be for them to miss out on much of what it is to be human. Sadness, loss, pain, illness, unfair treatment … all of these things happen in this broken world, and while we don’t wish for them, don’t welcome t
Read more