Bits for Sunday, February 17, 2008

Happy belated Valentine’s Day! Do you have any idea how hard it is to be on a dessert fast (for Lent) during Valentine’s season? Well I guess technically I’m not a hard-core Lenten “faster” person, because I do allow myself two desserts and two snacks a week. Let me just explain to you that I am, according to Paula Deen’s definition, a liberal dessert eater. I heard her say on TV that there are two kinds of people – liberal dessert eaters, who must have dessert at each meal, and conservative dessert eaters, who can take or leave dessert. Well, if they leave it, I’m takin’ it. I have dessert at every meal…and usually for two snacks a day…and sometimes, just for fun, I have dessert after my dessert just to polish it off. So I figure knocking it down to four a week is a fast for a liberal like myself.

So anyway, in celebration of Valentine’s Day, I made a huge batch of sugar cookies, complete with icing and sprinkles, and a batch of turtles, which I heard were very good. My allotment of two still awaits my next available dessert intake. And after I cooked all that food, I just sat and stared at it longingly.

But I did save a dessert and a snack for Valentine’s Day, and that evening a couple of my friends came over with my gift: brownie sundaes. Talk about a liberal dessert! A brownie and chocolate chunk ice cream and whipped cream and sprinkles and probably a few other things that I completely missed in my haste to enjoy a liberal moment.

Despite my love for all things sugar and chocolate, I do recognize that there’s more to the day than candy and flowers and cards. I know that many of you out there don’t care for the holiday – because you think it’s just another excuse for commercialism and needless material purchases. But a couple of years ago, I came to really savor this day and look forward to the chance to share love (usually of the baked variety) with others around me.

This year, though, my thoughts turned elsewhere. My “book of the month” for February is called The Best Thing I Ever Did for My Marriage. No, you haven’t missed any news…I don’t need this book. But I love to read ahead when it comes to life situations, and this seemed like an appropriate book for this month. It’s a compilation of short advice stories from fifty different women, and I am learning so much from my reading. Normally I find myself journaling things like “Ouch…hadn’t thought of that. Going to need to work on this one.” Thankfully I still have time!

These stories aren’t about how to be a better home decorator or cook. They’re the stories of the tough stuff…the overlooked stuff…the stuff that really makes all the difference.

I found wisdom in advice like this:

Helper is more than just a word. It’s a high and holy title. It’s not about something you do…it’s about who you are as a wife.

How draining and defeating it must be for a man to have every dream squelched because of an overzealous wife’s desire for personal security.

Don’t worry about what your husband is or isn’t doing. That’s between God and him. Concern yourself with your own behavior – that’s what you’re responsible for.

God doesn’t give us insight into other people’s faults so we can criticize them, but so we can pray for them.

And in the way that God does…He brought to my attention examples of people around me who live love.

I was walking on the track one evening – a little later than I normally go – and I saw a couple that I often see at the gym. I haven’t heard their whole story, but someone told me the wife had a stroke a few years ago, and now his number one job is to take care of her. I’ll see him bring her in and put her on the elliptical or the exercise bike and then come back for her after a few minutes, but anytime they’re on the track, he walks right behind her while she takes her uneven steps around and around. I’ve seen them there dozens of times, but this night she seemed tired. Maybe it was just because the hour was later…but I noticed that on the last couple of laps, she leaned all her weight against him and he walked and pushed at the same time. And that was such a great reminder to me of what it means to really show love. It’s about walking with someone…and when she can’t walk anymore, you walk for her.

I also went to the viewing of one of my friend’s dads this week. He was a man who wasn’t very old, but he’d been sick for many years. And while I waited in line, I looked at the pictures they had put up on a board…of days when the kids were little and he was the way I remembered him. And I thought of his wife and all these years that she had taken care of him and gone to visit him when he had to go to the nursing home…and how she raised the kids to be great adult. Yet every time I saw her, she had a smile on her face and a very sweet and gentle spirit about her. No bitterness and resentment spilling over from her life. She just kept right on loving.

So I’m thankful for these examples…from the book and from my life. I’m thankful for those who take the time to be a positive influence to my learning mind. And I’m thankful for a day that isn’t just about chocolate, but gives me an opportunity to think about what love really means.