love over pumpkin spice

I have a training that starts at 8:30 today, so I have a ton more of my morning than normal. Now that Smokey (who has been sans cigarettes for nearly a month now!) is nursing again, I get up at 5:30 with him. At least until he starts working overnights for a while. As a result, I thought I’d take the time to spend an hour or so at a coffee shop. I have several things I need to get done attempting to self-promote the novel. Plus, I wanted to blog. Shockingly, I had to drive around and around to find a Starbucks open around where the training will be held. I’ve discovered I don’t like ‘working’ in a Starbucks. It’s only good as a drive-through. Then again, I am a bit of a coffee shop snob. However, I can see the brilliantly pink sky outside that huge glass wall, and that is pretty perfect. So easy to let the magic and wonder of our world pass us by.
Things are going wonderfully. Knock on wood. Of course every relationship goes through those phases where you are more and then less in love. We are in the more in love stage right now, and it is awesome. We went to a relationship class at church the other night, lead by an independent psychologist—not a member of the church. She, while a scattered presenter, spoke about how our culture has fostered depression, alimentation, and damaged relationships with our constant focus on individuality and seeing those who need love as weak. We are supposed to make sure we don’t loose ourselves to others. That we keep our own personal identity upmost and forefront. In so doing, we never really experience love. She told research study after research study showing the effects of being truly given in to love and the results of the living with the absence of that deep and all encompassing love. They were all experiments and psychologists that I’d heard of many times and had even studies in grad school, I’d simply forgotten.
Besides being there with Smokey and loving that, it was also a moment of clarity for me. I spend so much time beating myself up about how clingy I can be and how concerned about our love and our life together I tend to be. I forget that so many studies have shown that in most ways the need to be loved and to love is as vital as food in regards of having a life that is healthy.
Give yourself to love.
Open yourself up to the risk of loss.
Check and check.