What Does Love Look Like

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

Have you seen the picture on Facebook of the older couple walking hand in hand with their backs to the camera? It had some pithy saying about enduring love. Yesterday, a new one popped up on my screen.

This new picture was of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip. The photographer of the 1^st had no idea the 2^nd would ever meld with his, perhaps. Yet, both images stared up at me together. The twinkling eyes in both captivated me.

I looked back again and again. Respect, playfulness, and tenderness mingled together in those two glances frozen in time. The same twinkle 60 years apart undimmed by time or circumstance. If you looked closely, you'd almost feel you had invaded their privacy so intimate were the images.

If you have been in a lonely, complicated marriage, looking too long could prove painful. You know, the same kind of pain you feel when someone posts a chatty update about date night when you no longer remember if you ever had a date night? You feel the pain and look away before you bleed.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

If you've walked a long way with me now, you know how hard we have fought to survive. Our energy to do battle waxes and wanes, but we keep working toward a common goal: survival as a couple. Not surprisingly, images like those make me do some soul-searching. What does love look like?

There are days I tell myself love looks like his hard day's work despite a a double ear infection, bleeding ears, and diminished hearing. I tell myself love looks like staying up all night with sick kids but making sure he has a decent lunch for work and hot meal in the evening. I tell myself love looks like hard work without much hope of reward.
 

Some days, love looks like one more decision to keep on patching a broken relationship because he has not given up even when I wanted to. Love looks like a lot of hard work when what I yearn for is the picturesque implication of a stress free relationship. Love is work more often that it is feeling.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

As if he doesn't have enough with which to cope, the doctors have determined they may know why he has been increasingly unable to fight off simple infections. Increasingly potent doses of antibiotics for increasingly longer periods of time have been less and less effective. Now we have an answer to the question we've been asking for 14 years. We just don't know if we've found the cure.

I woke up every time I turned over last night. Apprehension is not my friend. Today is 'Iday #2', and we have all four been apprehensive. We fear infusion day followed  by side effect days. If you've ever known someone going thru chemo, you get what we fear. After his reaction last time, they are tweaking things. Yet, we are walking thru the valley of the unknown. Will this work? Is it worth it? Will it have been worth if it doesn't work? What will we do if it doesn't?

I talked with the nurse as she hooked up his IV. As I spoke of his years of declining health and my inability to sleep for fretting over his next few days, her eyes seemed to grow a little misty. “You know, some don't care like you do.” She seemed to refer to other spouses she's seen come and go over the years. Despite our pain, perhaps she sees something different in us. Maybe even something we don't see in ourselves?

Courtesy M. Horrocks

I fretted for fear I am a high maintenance patient's wife with all my fraidy cat drama. I don't want to wear her out the way this enemy has worn us out. I fear I have already. I want to run away to the marriage with a picturesque implication of a stress free environment. Today, it is nowhere in sight.

The camera of my mind sees another image mixing with the 2 Facebook images. My Dad sits by the ICU bed while we wait for the funeral home to carry my mom away for the last time. At 83, he has come to the hospital for 58 days straight. In his eyes, I see the look I saw in Queen Elizabeth's as she carried on with her Diamond Jubilee while the Prince lay, as the Brits say, in hospital. In my heart, I know that's what love looks like.

The IV bag empties slowly into his body. He sleeps for now. He sleeps the sleep of a man whose body is exhausted from trying to live. He is only 47-years-old. I am glad because I know he may not sleep as well for a few days. I sit and type, fussing and fuming over each little word, filling the time thinking about pictures of love.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

A tear slips down my cheek, and I hope the nurse will not need to check his vitals before I collect myself. I see the old couple walking away from the camera, hand in hand. I see the young and old Queen and Prince whose gazes are filled with devotion. I see my Dad spending his last few moments with the vessel that carried my mom on her earthly journey. I hope.

I hope that when the nurse returns and looks at me, she will see what I saw in all those pictures I remember now. I hope she will look at me and know what love looked like.

Love you long and strong fraidy cat. Love you most in the hard places when you wonder what love looks like. If you know someone whose life is full of hurt, fear, or pain, tell them you know a place where they are safe. Invite them in from the cold? 

Courtesy B. Creasy - 2010

Colossians 3:12 - 14 (The Message)

So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.