Difficult Seasons

As I’ve gotten older, there are two gifts that mean more to me than all of the others: mercy and grace.

It’s not that I don’t dearly appreciate the gifts of having enough and good health and toys and meaningful things to do.

But having God, family, and friends love me in spite of me is truly the priceless gift. They know me for who I really am, and it’s still okay. That’s an amazing feeling.

I hope you know that kind of love this Christmas season.

Merry Christmas to you, and thanks for your gifts of mercy and grace!

Love is caring more about another’s happiness than your own. After reading this article this morning about Randy Pausch, the Carnegie-Mellon professor struggling with Pancreatic Cancer and author of “The Last Lecture,” these words just stuck in my mind.

I started mentally testing out this definition. Is it true about the people I say I love? Is it true about the people who say they love me? How does it fit with John 3:16 which describes God’s love, or the two great commandments, “Love God,” “Love others?” Seems to work pretty well!

In fact, the more I thought about it, the more useful this short but practical definition of love became. I thought about how it applied to marriage, to parenting, to grandparenting, and it works. I thought about how it applied to caregiving, and found that it applies to lots if not all of the tough situations and decisions caregivers face.

I guess some would argue with the “caring more” part, wanting it to be more “caring as much.” And I probably wouldn’t quibble about that. And I know some would want to define “happiness” to give it their own twist (hopefully not “This is for your own good — it hurts me more than it hurts you!”). And I probably would quibble some with folks trying to do that.

It just seems to be to be a good working definition of love to apply every day to everyone. Now that’s the challenge!

Originally published in my personal blog on June 12, 2008