Okay, lately love has been freaking me out. Supposedly in college I'm supposed to meet someone that will look at me and decide "Hey, I'm going to love her for the rest of my life." I don't know if you caught that, but it said the rest of his life. Are you kidding me? That's an incredibly long amount of time to love someone that watches The Spongebob Movie multiple times a month and sometimes goes three days without washing her hair. Like, this person that supposedly exists is supposed to wake up every day and look at the dark circles under my eyes, those weird fly away baby hairs that never go into a bun, and my nail polish that's probably been chipped for two weeks, and decide to love me that day. "No," I hear you saying, "he will love you for who you are and not how you look." Okay, well I'm just going to go ahead and make the safe assumption that during the previous night I had already cried for no reason at all, watched roughly 12 YouTube vlogs in a row with the volume on too high, and gone on about six different rants about everything from gluten to Donald Trump. This person is just supposed to, like, enjoy these things? I don't know. I don't know anything about any of that. Love (in this sense of the word) is, like i said, freaking me out.
So, here's what I do know about love.
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Love is that really sad feeling in your stomach when you perform for the last time with your high school theatre troupe.
Love is when your dog sprints to the door every single time you open it. No exceptions.
Love is driving at sunset by yourself and singing every word to an entire playlist.
Love is the way Jesus gives you grace when you both know you'll mess up again.
Love is Disney World.
Love is the little girl you took care of all summer.
Love is calling your mom 5 times a day just because.
Love is the dance teacher that watched you grow up and never criticized you.
Love is voting for a better everyone, not a better you.
Love is singing at a wedding as a bride walks down the aisle.
Love is singing gospel at a funeral the very next week.
Love is hearing stories about an old friend you don't talk to anymore, and simply hoping they're doing alright.
Love is when your grandma sends you cookies in the mail.
Love is making a baby laugh.
Love is a nap with your sleep deprived sorority sisters during recruitment.
Love is inside of those people that smile into their books at Starbucks.
Love is finding the stories your grandpa wrote down for you when you were little.
Love is your roommate cooking pasta in the kitchen.
Love is in everything you've ever touched, heard, seen, smelled, or tasted.
Because love is your life, and all the little moments in it that have reminded you what you're doing here.
Maybe the reason we find it so hard to comprehend love in the average sense is because we've been experiencing it much more broadly every day since we came into the world. Maybe love is just too big, too much, too beautiful to dumb down into waking up together in the mornings.
