I was sorting through some papers this morning and came across a few quotes I had collected on the topic of "love."
My absolute favorite is an excerpt from a cotton commercial. The woman quoted is telling a short story of her childhood. Every night her mother came in, closed her window, and covered her. When she asked her mother why she did this, her mother replied, "Love is seeing a need and filling it." I think that is a really good definition.
When my daughter Kate was little, she was struggling with a particular punishment I had given her and was doubting my love. I told her this story. Then I asked her if she knew that I waited for her to fall asleep every night so I could cover her before I went to bed. That night, she faked sleep just so she could see if it was true. When I pulled the covers up and bent down to kiss her forehead, she opened her eyes and reached up to hug me. "You DO love me!" she exclaimed.
A second quote comes from Francis Bacon. "A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk is but a tinkling of cymbals, where there is no love."
And finally, a quote with no source~ "The first duty of love is to listen."
All of these remind me that love is an action. I can tell my children I love them, but it doesn’t mean anything if I don’t demonstrate it. My children don’t just need a teacher, they need someone who will listen to them, and sympathis with them, and sacrifice for them. They need a mother.
Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. Ephesions 5:2
I am not one of those people who enjoys constantly being surrounded by people, but living in a home with eight (homeschooled so they are with me constantly) children doesn't offer many opportunities for silence or solitude. I have learned to cope with this by tuning out the noise when I am feeling overwhelmed. But this can be a problem when my children come to speak to me and I "hear" them, without really listening. I can't count the times that I have agreed to something without having any idea what I was asked. So, one of my goals for this year is to demonstrate my love to my children by being a better listener, especially outside of the "classroom."
I'd also like to focus on more just for fun projects this year- reading, crafting, day trips. All of these things can be educational, but some of them ought to be done for no reason other than that they provide an opportunity to make happy family memories. So, those are a couple of goals I've come up with to help me refocus on the HOME part of our homeschool.
