The Look of Love

Maybe I spoke a little too soon about being excited for my son's kindergarden experience. I was so happy to have more time to do what I was looking forward to do with the new time. The show stopper is that I've since had to take him out of kindergarden because he isn't ready yet to be there.

I have to admit, that my experience with getting a child ready for kindergarden has not given me enough sense to judge correctly when a child really is truly ready to be starting school. My son is very intelligent but he is also very immature to following instructions without standing over him to watch him do it. Besides he just barely turned 5 and it isn't a big rush to get him in kindergarden, especially since he is the youngest in his class. Maybe some kids at the exact age of 5 are ready to be there, but not everyone fits that standard. And I'm okay with that. He will be that much more prepared starting at 6. Thank heavens I also had a wonderful teacher who has kept me in the loop about his progress and was very professional, compassionate, and patient about leading us to our decision to pull him out. Thank you Mrs. Malvin!!

So after doing a mad rush to find a preschool, I am now prepared to go forward and again enjoy having my son around, although at a small personal cost. I may not have as much time as I planned to have, but that will resolve itself in time. And sooner than I will really like years to come I'm sure. So for now, I am mom for a few more hours of the day than a creative. And that's okay. It is a worthy sacrifice.

"Everything that I understand, I understand only because I love."
~ Leo Tolstoy

So many times I think it is easy to look past the ability to love. How it really affects us. How having it and giving it expands us to a higher wisdom. Love is kind, patient, long suffering...

If we start each day with the goal to have more love, more kindness, patience, and long suffering, we become a different person. I'd like to believe that we become better people. And after a long time practicing, we become more than better people. We just ARE better people. So after reading this quote this evening and contemplating all the things that are on my plate. All the decisions that I'm about to make for the rest of this year, I have to say that the reasons behind making them are because I love.

Not in the sense that I'm in love with my husband. Or that I love my kids and family. But that I've been touched by the effect of love in my life. And because love has been abundant in my life, I desire to spread that love to others. I see the world through the eyes of love.

I'm not exactly sure when it was that I had so much love that it changed me forever. It isn't that I've not struggled in my life. I have had loving parents but an equally difficult dose of trial in my childhood too. I'm not going to lie and say that I had a perfect beginning or middle or today. Because I haven't. I struggle just like everyone else.

But I choose to love. And that I think is the most important thing. Love has taught me that sometimes you only get what you decide you will have. If you want love, you have to love first. It is the same of understanding, gratitude, and respect. It is a choice that you have to choose. Love has taught me that it is hard to love when you are unloved. However, if you love yourself first, then no matter how hard it is you will find a way to receive the love that you deserve. This isn't about vain love in oneself. When you have healthy love for yourself, you balance the self love with the giving love. And it all comes back to you when it is time.

Sometimes we give love to those who don't deserve it. I have to admit that I've given that love and I've often wondered why it is that I did that? Especially if they didn't deserve it? I think it comes down to another principle of love that has been taught in the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you can love someone who does not deserve it, you attract the amount of love you gave away back to yourself at a later time. You reap what you indeed sow.

I guess you really can live off of love. If it teaches you so many important principles, if it guides your life, then it affects your life. And doesn't that in the end mean that you can live off of what love has done for you? Love can be a very hard teacher. And I expect that even after I write this, there will be days to come where love is going to teach me more lessons, and sometimes I may even choose to rebuke love and choose something else. But I do hope that I will remember love and make a better resolution to come back to choose love when those days pass. I hope that I will not give up on love, that I look to its teaching methods as a necessary bread of life.

So far, love and I have been fairly close companions.