It Comes in All Forms

Love comes in all forms, sizes and shapes. Sometimes those around us don’t know that some of our reactions or actions are how we show our love or admiration for another person, but love really does come in all forms.

For our children love comes in happy, tangible, and sometimes painful forms. Those little creatures that we have created don’t know, nor will they ever know what we do for them, how much we love them, and what we sacrifice for them…until hopefully until the one day they hold a “little creature” of their very own.

To show our love for them we do things that we wouldn’t normally do, or even fathom of doing. We forgive people that may have hurt us in our past, to make our child’s life a little less complicated or stressful. We bite our tongue a lot around our children, so they don’t have to understand or endure the adult complications that we go through on a daily basis for them.

We try not to say too much about a friend choice or a girlfriend or boyfriend selection, until we see it becoming serious. Their happiness is our happiness – but also as a parent, we have the right to step in and offer personal experience or suggestions about their selection of partners, if we can see there is the possibility of their heart getting broken.

As parents, we clean up, we pick up, we wash stains out of clothes that we wouldn’t wash out of for just anyone. We lay in bed with them when they are sick, let them snuggle in our arms, cough on us, or sneeze on us; just so they know that mommy and daddy are there for them no matter what.

Just the other day, our middle one, had been running a pretty high fever for almost four days, and he asked to sleep with mommy and daddy, and of course we said yes. He and his Daddy fell asleep together while I stayed awake until about 2 A.M., finishing up some work; and as I was ready for bed, my little man had managed to spread his wings across his Daddy’s face and my entire side of the bed. Now mind you this is a King Size bed, but none the less this little dude, took up the entire thing.

I was too tired to head upstairs, so I just passed out on the couch. So, it’s those things they will never know, or understand why we do them.

Love for friends comes in all forms too. You can say it, you can show it, or love for friends also comes in your loyalty and honesty. I am an emotional person, and I love to hug and kiss everyone, really. But a lot of my friends aren’t’ that “huggy touchy” so I have learned to show them my love through dedication, loyalty, and continual support through their various ventures and experiences in life.

But a husband and wife can show love and admiration in so many ways. It’s funny, my husband and I couldn’t be more opposite when it comes to romance. I guess it’s the fact that I am a female, and a writer and my imagination is always churning. But I love Rom-Coms, and Disney movies, and overall just a happy ending. My husband always thinks that if it’s not a grand romantic gesture towards me, that I won’t be happy. But that really couldn’t be further from the truth for me. I don’t want flowers, they die; I don’t want a card, they are too expensive; I don’t need candy, my rear end is big enough already.

What I do need is an extra hour of sleep on Saturday; I need the dishwasher to miraculously be emptied; I need my car washed and vacuumed and all the Goldfish and chocolate melted into my floorboard to be cleaned up.

And you know what, he does all of that for me. So, you see what he doesn’t understand is that he already is my Disney Prince Charming, he has rescued me from a life of little sleep, a full dishwasher, and a rolling grocery store, with all the food on my floorboard.

Men aren’t as gushy as woman, and don’t typically need too many grand gestures. But I show my love to him by thanking him for being such a great dad, for working so hard for our family, and for being faithful to me. And when I have time I try to mow the yard, to help cut down on some of his chores, so he can spend more time with us when he is home, and less time working in the yard.

So, you see love comes in all forms. You just have to be open to recognizing them, and not expect them to always be in the traditional form of cards, flowers, and candy…because you know what? Anyone can buy those; but not everyone is will to bring you a cool wash cloth when you are hanging your head over the toilet from the stomach bug, or buy you ducks and geese on Valentine’s Day when they know you’ve been wanting them for a while.

Remember to read between the lines of love, it’s not always black and white, there is a whole lot of gray in there too.