I want to love like that.
Cover fully in a cloak of love, wash in an outpouring of infinitesimal detail of nurture, care about the most precious ways of lovings….love.
Her hallmark is care and nurture to a high degree. A twinkle in her eye of that next small yet grand expression of love. Pillows of down fluffed just right, lemons freshly picked from her tree sent out the door with her children to squeeze, experience, savor. The fruit of her love.
Sharing a book on Ireland or Maine, asking won’t you look on beauty with me. Won’t you share the smallest of treasures with me. And let’s linger. Let’s talk. Let’s savor this moment.
The cheese is softening in the warmth of the window ledge and it will have reached its own cheesey perfection soon. In the world of Saga lovers it will be divine perfection. A love gift.
I want to learn more about love from her. How chicken baking tells children I want to nourish and feed you with all that I am and all that I have. I want to fill your soul with my love.
Extravagant love in the simple.
Learn to receive the smallest love gifts, a touch, a word, a gesture, time spent with family with a deep appreciation.
And to respond by giving.
To hand out freely to give richly to savor all.
Because I have experienced the love of this woman I know love in this way. Dwelling on the love language of nourishing and nurturing and love in the details leads me to think on the absence of these. The what if these were not. The pain of void of love in the details. The inattention to all the small gestures of grace and love and tenderness.
The pain that comes from being ignored and unloved.
She tells me she was stopped by the man on the street, the local reporter while shopping at the Piggly Wiggly. She is beaming with something simple yet meaningful she wants to share. She tells of the young woman so cold, no sweater shivering. The reporter asks, begs really, “You’re my last interviewee, after you I can go home.”
“So I said well sure.” The question from the newspaper reporter was what is the most important thing in your home?
She smiles like a warm and wonderful secret is lying in wait. Like she needs and wants to share what she has discovered. She asks me not to tell her husband she wants him to be surprised.
“I told them my family.” Family is her greatest treasure.
We prepare for church and she brings a gift of warmth to my shoulders, covers me in fur. Love gifts always stirring in her heart and mind. Her heart is beating with excitement because she knows she will be covered by the words of her beloved preacher. The man whose own life has touched her a fresh. And she cherishes the weeks remaining before she’s left to carry on without her beloved preacher. The repetition of her deep respect and devotion for him penetrates my own heart as I grieve this upcoming loss, this void which will cause her deep pain.
To hand out freely, to give richly, to savor all.
To love extravagantly.
I want to love like that.
elizabeth w. marshall 