extreme make-over blog edition

Move that Bus!

The camp has new landscaping!

Because Spring has sprung, I have changed my blog's look to a more fitting color scheme.  Gotta keep up with the seasons, I say.

Lincoln has been in St. Louis this entire week spending time with Ben's parents.  The first two days he was gone, I enjoyed the quiet & slower pace of my days.  Now I'm just moping around the house, longing to hear his screams, laughter & funny sentence structure.  I don't think poor Levi knows what has happened this week.  He keeps looking around for his brother, wondering why in the world silence is suddenly upon him.  He's in for a rude (and loud) awakening when Lincoln returns.  Which, BTW, is Sunday.  We're so excited to see him...we'll drive to Paducah to meet Mike & Sherry halfway to pick him up.

I titled my blog "one girl longing to love well" simply because when it comes right down to it, I feel like that is precisely what I am trying to do in my life these days.  It's so easy to say 'I love you' to someone.  At least it is for me.  Shoot, I say it to the Walgreen's check-out girl if she cuts out a coupon & gives it to me so I can save 50 cents.     

I said it to Adam the pharmacist when he recommended the enema I should give to Levi. On the more serious side, I say it to my closest girlfriends upon saying good-bye to them on the phone & I sign off on emails with "I love you" to my mom & sister. In the purest & possibly most important form, I say it to Ben before falling asleep each night, & whisper it in Lincoln & Levi's ears at bedtime. But usually when I say it, it is in a haphazard fashion, maybe in a hurried or somewhat distracted tone, not really feeling the full gravity of the emotion it should convey. I don't want to be like this. When I say something like 'I love you', I want every fiber of my being to truly mean it. Same thing goes with loving well. It's easy to say you love someone or something, but it's quite a different thing entirely to love it well. Who's the person I love the most in this world? My Ben. But who is the person that at times I treat the worst in this world? My Ben. More often than not, my love is messy, self-centered, full of failure, & has a bad attitude colored all over it. No wonder love is talked about so many times in the scriptures...it's downright difficult. Jesus knows this. And what better way to teach us how to love well than to show us a perfect, clean as a whistle, whiter than snow love like the Cross. That's the kind of love I want my life to be about. That's the kind of love I want to show people. Audio Adrenaline always closed out their shows with the song "They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love". I used to think that song was so cheesy, so corny, so youth-groupy. But the more I listened to it, the more I realized how perfect it is. There's simply no better way to put it. The way we love-if it is, in fact, a love for Jesus & to glorify Him-should mark us as Christians. What a privilege. What an honor. And what a challenge.
So in the coming minutes, days, months & most definitely years...I will try to show a love like that. It will probably drift in & out of my life at different times, kind of like a breeze. But if I can love someone with the love of Jesus...fully feeling the weight of that love if only for a little bit or a short time...well then that, my friends, is loving well.