CHOOSING to Love

I LOVE love.

I do.

Love of Self, Love of others, Love of life...LOVE is EVERYTHING.

This energy that flows through us

that we get to share with the world

is the greatest gift bestowed on us.

CHOOSING to LOVE isn't about being sappy or sentimental.

It is an exchange of joy and makes life so damn fun.

As I pack up my home to move, I am finding treasures buried in the boxes of my closets.  Yesterday, I struck gold when I discovered one of my late-husband's Tshirts in a scuba bag.  When I lifted it to my face, I couldn't believe that it still smelled like him.  Ahhhhh...this took me to my knees as I cried while smiling.  I indulged my feelings by laying on the floor with his Tshirt wrapped around my face letting the tears come, breathing,  breathing him in, remembering him, remembering us, feeling the intensity of his life and his death, resting in his love and allowing his love, the love we shared to hold me.

No sooner had I gotten back on my feet when I found a shoe box full of love letters from John to me and from me to John.  The dates ranged 1994 to 2005, reading each of them, I could see and feel the evolution of our love, our ability to express this love and be vulnerable.  The joy leapt off the paper.  I laughed out loud and still chuckle as I write this blog when I came across a drawing he had scratched out of his favorite sexual position, writing underneath it You get the picture of my plans for you tonight.  How damn fun!  The comic relief was welcomed and I knew it was as much as a gift as the poetic letters where he poured out his heart.

One of my letters to him spoke of how I never believed in fairy tales, how I never was that little girl believing some prince would ride up on a white horse and carry me off so we could live happily ever after; but I was so glad that in spite of my beliefs that life had proven me wrong.  He had taken me on the greatest adventure of life:  LOVE.  I ended with this:  They lived happily ever after because they choose to LOVE.

More tears and heart pangs ensued as I drank in the words we had written so long ago that are a part of me, a part of us.  The freedom I now live isn't the absence of feelings but the inclusion of all that comes up so I bowed to the totality of this experience.  This is also choosing to love...my Self.  

I moved on to sift through photos and hit the jackpot.  There John stood sun tanned and bare-assed on the back of our houseboat at Lake Cumberland in the broad daylight cupping his pasty white cheeks with his hands.  The date on the back is 1995 which made me crack up even more because it was before digital which meant this had been printed at a photo lab.  This is also choosing to love...loving life, the silly and the absurd; and the things we do wrapped in the love of another.  

Love is indeed an exchange of JOY that makes life so damn fun!  Welcome it.  Soak it up.  And Pass it on!