Love is Funny

Love is a funny thing.  We long for it from the moment we are born.  At first, our longing is a matter of survival.  Or so it seems.  However, according to the Early Childhood Department at the University of Washington, babies are born with a desire to feel “wanted, warm, and safe from harm”.  Well, duh!?!  Isn’t that what we all want??? 

So much of what we do is really based in this longing that each of us is born with.  We want to be wanted…what was that Cheap Trick song? 

                I want you to want me. 

                I need you to need me.

                 I’d love you to love me. 

                I’m begging you to beg me. 

                                Courtesy of LyricsFreak.com

And, so it goes.  We go through life looking for someone to love us.  First, our parents.  And hopefully our siblings.  And then some friends.  And maybe a boyfriend or girlfriend.  Someday a spouse.  We just want them to love us.  But what happens when they don’t?  What happens to us when we aren’t shown love?  Where does that leave us?

I’ve had several opportunities this week to ponder these questions as I’ve watched people react in various situations, watch their interactions, reflected on my own interactions with others, and I’ve wondered.  What makes some people find ways to cope and move forward and continue seeking love, and what causes some people to become withdrawn and bitter and choose instead to manipulate and attack others, still deep-down desiring to be loved, but choosing to spoil the possibility before it can be taken away from them?

If you know me well, you probably know that I didn’t have a Norman Rockwell childhood.  Oh, it appeared that way to outsiders, but that was by design.  What went on when no outsiders were around was unpleasant at best, and downright awful at times.  I have spent much of my adult life wondering what caused things to be the way that they were…what thing happened to individuals to cause them to react the way that they did.  To make the choices they made.  The truth is, it doesn’t truly matter what it is that happened at some point in history because we all have a choice to make.  We can choose to let our past color our future.  And if our past is good, that is a good thing.  Or, we can choose a new future.  We can choose to be different.  To blaze a new trail.  To do better.  Or at least the best we can.

I chose the latter…I chose to do the best I could.  I chose to love with all of me, hoping for that love to be returned, and I have been blessed by love.  I have a wonderful husband who loves me unconditionally.  Sometimes he’s not so nice.  But sometimes neither am I.  At the end of the day, though, we still love each other fiercely.  And that love has blessed us with these five pieces of our hearts that walk around living and breathing and being…loving our children and being loved by them in return is truly life’s greatest gift.   I may not have had a perfect model of love in my home as a child, but I was blessed with the knowledge that I DID have a perfect model of love in my God, and for that I will forever be grateful.

So, on to my crazy observations of those around me…I had the strangest, almost out-of-body experience this weekend when I met my father’s girlfriend.  It still seems crazy weird to even say those three words together.   But she was here.  In my house.  I met her.  I talked to her.  I hugged her.  I cried with her.  She is real, and so is this thing that is happening that is almost surreal to me.  My father has found love.  The kind of love we all long for.  The kind of love where when you see someone, your face lights up.  The kind of love where the second you leave each other, you start to miss one another.  The kind of love that causes you to seek out ways to take care of the other person because they truly are an extension of you.  And it is awesome.  My father had one of those challenging childhoods.  He reacted by becoming a caretaker.  He took care and he took care and he took care until I worried it would kill him.  He long ago gave up truly being loved and accepted that it wasn’t for him.  And then, God opened a door so wide for him that he would have had to run the other direction not to walk through it, and so here he is.  He is in love.  He is happy.   He is wanted, warm, and safe from harm.  And that safe from harm part is the one that chokes me up.  Because I have worried.   Oh, have I worried about him.  I have wanted him to be well, to be happy, to be content…but he hasn’t been. 

A few months ago, though, I saw a change in my dad.  I saw him light up when he talked about her.  I saw him want to tell me about her, and about her life and her home and what she said.  I saw peace, because he found the one who will love him.  So, even though this love will take him far from us as he makes a move to be closer to her, I feel such joy that I could do nothing more than thank her when I met her.  Thank her for loving my dad, for giving him his safe place, his place to be wanted.  Because when you have that yourself, you want nothing less than that for those you love.  I have prayed for that for him.  She truly was an answer to a prayer and so to God, I say, thank you, thank you, thank you because THIS is a very good thing.

University of Washington Department of Early Childhood, The first relationship: parent-infant attachment is key to child’s development,  http://www.washington.edu/earlychildhood/articles/the-first-relationship-parent-infant-attachment-is-key-to-child2019s-development