Love Grows

This post is dedicated to the one thing I love most in the world.

Books.

Just kidding, sweetheart, you know I mean you.

Now back to the books.

It occurred to me this morning that if you were to look at my "For the Home" board on Pinterest, you'd see that it consists of 80% pictures of in-home libraries and about 20% other stuff. That might not be an exact estimation, but really, I'm an English major, math is not my strong suit, and it's almost true that the one thing I am most concerned about in our current home-buying process is having enough room for all of my books. I say "almost" because really my first concern was that I wanted to have room for the living, breathing people in our family and, if possible, a guest bedroom for our parents because I know they will just want to visit us (okay, their adorable grandchild) whenever possible.

So...guess what our new house (hopefully, if everything works out!) has?

A room for a library.

Guess what it doesn't have?

A fourth bedroom (aka guest room).

So, parents, you have until we have our next child to come and stay in a bedroom with a door. But the third bathroom will always be available to you. The good news is, that is located right off the library, and you are welcome to sleep there anytime you wish.

I guess by now we've established that I dearly love my books.

Do you know what I love even more?

Possibly Texas and chocolate.

Possibly.

All three rank pretty high on my list.

But even more than chocolate, even more than Texas, and even more than my books, I love my husband and daughter.

Scott and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary yesterday. Somewhere in the minutes before I fell asleep last night, I remember him saying something about he didn't love me when we first got married. Granted, I was half asleep, so I probably am not quoting him correctly, but I think what he meant was that when we were married 36 months ago, neither of us had a clue that our knowledge of true love was about at the level of a preschooler's knowledge of the alphabet. We could recite it, we could recognize it, we could even make all the correct sounds, but really...there is so much more.

And when I really stop to think about it, though I'd like to think I have at least a Bachelor's degree in love, the reality is that we're probably "reading" on a third-grade level at the moment.

The good news is, if there was an accelerated reader program for love, I'm pretty sure we'd be racking up the points. Why? Because Scott is really good at doing the dishes. And I am really good at keeping him in clean (albeit wrinkly) clothes. And when our daughter woke him up at four am, he got up with her without disturbing me. And then when she woke up again at six am, I got up after only briefly checking to make sure he was still breathing (clearly I didn't know that he'd been up at four and not getting up was his way of informing me that it was my turn, thus I had to check to make sure he was still alive). And then, when Kevin started whimpering and I whispered to her to be quiet so she didn't wake up daddy and she started crying as loud as she could in what has become termed as her "grandpa cry" (as in she isn't hurt, hungry, or wet, so all she really needs is attention), Scott heard, got out of bed, and the three of us played until it was time for him to leave for work.

My grandma gave us a little book for our anniversary entitled, "What Love Is." For the fans of Sounds for Sunday out there (LDS music you can find on stations 92.9 in Cache Valley and  FM 100.3 in Salt Lake City on Sundays and online streaming anytime), you probably have heard a version of the song that this book is based on. (I tried to find a version of the song to post here with no luck. The author is Carol Lynn Pearson, and as a side note, her personal history is quite interesting--more could be written about that but I digress.)

This song/poem/story was first introduced to me by my Grandpa Browning. I remember visiting and staying with my grandparents for a few days, probably as a teenager. My grandpa was teaching a Marriage and Family Sunday School class. I noticed a version of this little book on his side table, by the chair where he did his reading/studying. He saw me reading it and told me that it was one of his favorites, and that was how he felt about my Grandma. His message to me then, although he may not have put it in these particular words, was that love grows.

Their first touch was at seventeen when the 
moon was high and her hair was soft and her skin was
warm and her lips were full and her heart beat fast against his chest.

As he looked at her looking at him he had never seen
anything so beautiful--

And he thought, "Now I know what love is."

I remember Scott's smile as we read the little book together last week (I knew the wrapped gift was a book, like I was going to wait until our actual anniversary to open it!). We scooted a little closer together on our loveseat and our lips curved upward as we thought of our early relationship. While I can't say we fell in love at seventeen, we were around that age when our friendship started to grow and later on that blossomed into love.

Our next touch was at nineteen, a hug before he left on his mission. And then a kiss at twenty-one, engaged at twenty-two--

Another touch was at twenty-three when rings were placed...

We were both twenty-three when we were married. We thought that we knew what love was then. We thought it again as we held each other in the NICU and watched our baby girl fight for her life (there was no lovely little moment after she was born where we turned to each other and said, "I love you." There was no time for that, and the loss of that moment is something I still grieve about).

And every time we face a tragedy, a graduation, a mistake, a job change, a move, a big decision, we turn to each other and we think that we know what love is.

And then we look at our grandparents--two sets together in heaven, one set together on earth, and my Grandpa and Grandma Browning patiently waiting to be reunited--and we see how their love has continued to blossom, despite death's interruption.

And I know that we have so far, so many years of learning, so many reading levels to conquer, so many miles and years to go before we find out what love really is.

But isn't that the beautiful thing about it?

Love keeps growing.