Advent: Week 2: Love

Good Morning and happy Monday to everyone.  I hope you all had a great weekend.  Mine did not start out so great.  I got the stomach flu on Friday.  It was HORRIBLE.  I am a total and complete baby when I am sick and I was really wishing I could teleport my mom to my condo.  No one can take care of you like your mom can, in my opinion.  I think it's a combination of them knowing what you want/need when you are sick and loving you unconditionally.  So while many people would be disgusted by your illness, your mom's love for you looks past the grossness and just wants to comfort you.

What a lovely little segue into this week's Advent post, huh?  The theme for the 2nd week of Advent is Love.  In the immortal words of the Prime Minister's monologue (Hugh Grant's character) in Love Actually,

"Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspicion... love actually is all around."

I like this monologue because it addresses many of the forms of love.  It's a well-known fact that suicide rates increase during the holiday season.  Sadly, this "most wonderful time of year" can be a time of isolation and loneliness for some for a plethora of reasons.  As Mother Teresa said, "The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread."  I know it oversimplifies the issue of depression and suicide to sum it up and blame it on people hungering for love and personal connections, but I think that is a large part of the problem.

I feel very lucky and blessed as I most certainly do not feel an absence of love in my life.  Yes, I could focus on the fact that I am not married or dating anyone right now, but there is so much love in my life, I find it easier to overlook that a significant other is not part of my life right now.  Instead I focus on love from God, family, my nephews and niece (who fall into the family category, but warrant a special mention because they make me feel especially loved), and friends.

So this holiday season, I am choosing to focus on all of the love in my life, and I want to make a conscious effort to let the others in my life know they are loved and appreciated, through both my words and my actions.  I'll be sharing a little project later this week that ties in well with this message of spreading more love, so be sure to tune in on Wednesday to hear more about that.

I'll close with a scripture verse that emphasizes using actions, instead of words: 

"Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth" (1 John 3:18)