Over the next few weeks I will be focusing on a word of the day drawn from a list created at the beginning of January. Each word was chosen to serve as a guide to inspire and inform my steps through 2020. If you are just joining me now and want to look in on earlier posts on this topic, you will find links to each at the end.

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LOVING

About to head home after a long day of work, I standing at the security desk gathering up my things while talking with my young daughters on my first ever cell phone, a Motorola that looked kind of like a brick with an antenna. I’d landed on that one because all the others cost twice as much per month, and I was nothing if not on a tight budget. Not only that, it was big enough that if someone tried to snatch my purse I could do some serious damage to the would-be thief. My last words as I ended the phone call were the same ones they always were.

I love you girls.

Looking up from my phone call as the young woman behind the security desk handed me my coat, I noticed tears in her eyes. You know, she said, I’m sure my parents love me, but I’ve never heard them actually say it to me.

That happened 27 years ago, but I will never forget that moment. It honestly didn’t dawn on me that other people didn’t express their love verbally. At least in part.

There are many ways to express love, and words are but one way. Communicating words of love without actions to back them up ring hollow. Loving actions without ever hearing the words can be too faint to hear. Each without the other is like a fragment of a thought. When it comes to love, it is best expressed in complete sentences.