love

"i understand love better today than i did when i married him."

my journey with grandma has had so many wonderful turns. we travelled in europe (and fought like sisters). she taught me to knit. she encouraged me to quit a job that was, as she said, sucking the life out of me. she often told me to "put on my patience pants". she instilled in me a love of peanut butter. we would sit together and talk about faith, and come up with ways to get grandpa to take us out on the pontoon boat.

but the most significant thing we ever talked about was love. she knew me. she knew what i needed to hear, and she took the time to say it. several years ago she told me that her biggest prayer for me was that i would "get drunk and fall in love". if you knew her, you could hear those things coming out of her mouth. what she wanted for me, more than anything, was to stop overthinking and truly enjoy the journey of falling in love. she told me, "dating should be fun, not such hard work". those are words i've come to live by.

but i know love more true because of the relationship that grandma and grandpa have had. just this last summer we had a long talk, on one of our trips to town, about how much her love for grandpa has grown through all of these years. they definitely had their hard times, but in her last year of life, she grew to know love better because of her relationship with him. i will never forget the "jule" or the "neal" being yelled across the living room. but i will also never forget that she often called him her boyfriend, and he often called her sweetheart. as a testimony to the way she lived life and grew as a person, she told me that at 75, she understood love better than she ever had before.

i hope that i will grow to be just like her. i hope that i will grow to love the way she did.