I Do Love You

I do love you; I'm just not ready to announce it to the world.

This was a saying on a calendar that my coworker bought for me as a birthday present a while back. This was actually December 3's entry but I'd been on the road last week so I had to skip ahead to today's date. As I read it, it kind of made me think. But we all know I'm a big over analyzer so that shouldn't surprise you.

Is it really love if you can't show it? I mean, isn't love supposed to be wild and crazy and shout to the treetops? Or is love the steady, quiet, confident kind that shows in someone's eyes? So I looked it up. There are a ton of definitions of love. I picked a few that caught my eye:

A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness. A feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair. To have an intense emotional attachment to. A feeling of compassion; with no thought for a reward. To like or desire enthusiastically. A person who is the object of deep or intense affection or attraction; beloved. Often used as a term of endearment. A score of zero in tennis or squash. The passionate yearning of a heart.

My parents are an example of earthly love. They've been married since I was three, and I'm now a little older than three. Life hasn't always been easy for them, but my parents still love each other. In fact, my dad still writes my mom poems. When I stayed with them at a hotel last week, I was just about to fall asleep when I heard my dad whisper to my mom, "I love you Sweetie." To me, that's love. When life turns out to be a little different than you expected it to, and somehow those differences make it better, that's love.

Out of all these definitions, my favorite would have to be the last one. Sometimes I shout to the world that I'm loved and love God. Other times, its hiding just behind my eyes. Its really up to me how little or how much I show you the love that steadily and confidently burns in my heart. Ah, the glory and agony of free will.