Life has felt crazy lately. It is funny how my life frequently feels “more” crazy than usual, when in fact I think it is a rather constant stream of craziness that I should be used to. I feel like I should acclimate to all the chaos, but maybe in the end it isn’t a good think to have crazy be normal.
Nick was out of town again last week. He has had to travel a lot lately. The night before he left, he got home early- even before the kids were home- so he could pack. After the kids were home, I was unpacking their backpacks, and I have always thrown the empty bags by the back door, until I am done and then I pick them up and hang them in the garage. Well, the bags are nylon and I was in sock…. I was hurrying by them, doing something, when I caught the edge of one of the bags and slipped. I’m not exactly sure how it all happened, the kids were sitting at the counter, but no one really noticed until I was already down. Somehow I eded up laying in the opposite direction and my head, not my hands, met the hardwood floor first. I sat up, whimpering a little, because it hurt, when my hands came away covered in blood! I was happy Nick was home and the kids got him from outside and he got to look at the mess before me!
I have a good fish hook sized and shaped cut over my left eye, which quickly swelled up into a good sized egg. The cut will scar, but luckily it wasn’t too deep and we super glued it together. I also had a bruise along the middle of my forehead (I must have bounced!). The egg has since gone down, but the blood has just drained down, giving me a pretty impressive black eye! I’ve been thinking about taking it easy since then, I know it gave me a little of a concussion, but taking it easy is hard to do!
After about a month of no success and work, Pierce seems to be officially potty trained. One day, he just started using the toilet. Trying to teach him was miserable, but when he decided he wanted to do it, he has done great! About the same time he decided he was a big boy, and not a baby, he has started telling me: “I love you, Mom.” As I wrote that line, he is sitting on my lap and turned around, almost like he could read what I was writing and said, “Mom,” long pause to get my attention, “I love you.”
He is two and a half and I love to hear those words, but it has made me think a lot about love and how he even knows what love is. Love is such an abstract concept, how can anyone so young, who’s vocabulary consists mostly of nouns, understand? I think that he knows what love is because love can be felt. It is in reality a very tangible, intangible substance. I know when someone loves me. Beyond knowing that someone loves me, there are those moments when those feelings of love seem to hang so heavy in the air you can see and touch them. As I have held him and loved him up until this point, when I felt that overflowing feeling of love I have kissed him and told him I loved him and he has felt it and he now understands and returns that love.
It makes me think of 1 John 4:19: “We love him, because he first loved us.” I don’t think I ever understood that before, but Pierce has taught me a little about what it means. We love God and really can only understand the concept of Love itself, because of the love we have felt from our Heavenly Father. Just as Pierce has felt my love for him and because of that has learned what it means to say, “I love you,” I have felt God’s love- and compassion- for me and because of that I can begin to say that I love him and others.
