Love?

1. ما بقالي قـلب يشفع لك خطيّه, 2. أنزل القلب وآمـر مابـه إلاَّ حلالـك, 3. أنا حبَّيتك وحبَّي لِـك حقيقـه, 4. ان قلت احبــــك


This is a subject I've given bunches of thought to in the past few days. While I'm great at receiving love from family and friends, I'm much more stingy on how I give love back to people. I also stink at knowing and understanding what love really is. I tend to lean towards Hollywood's 'chick-flick' version of love-flowers, candy, hug 'n' kisses, people telling me how beautiful/talented/fill-in-the-black I am...my definition of love also tends to center around ME.

Kick in the pants time: "Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous, it does not brag, and it is not proud. Love is not is not rude, is not selfish, and does not get upset with others. Love does not count up wrongs that have been done. Love takes no pleasure in evil but rejoices over the truth. Love patiently accepts all things. It always trusts, always hopes, and always endures. Love never ends." -1 Corinthians 13:4-8a

Wow. Beautiful, and terrifying at the same time.

"My children, we should love people not only with works and talk, but by our actions and true caring." -1 John 3:18

I want to love people the way I was created to. The past few days of attempting to walk in love have not gone incredibly well, to put it nicely. "I don't WANT to wash the dishes!" and "I really don't WANT to watch you chew your food with your mouth open!!!" Sigh. I've been able to keep my mouth shut most of the time, but I'm not crazy about the fact that I still react selfishly to people and situations, whether they see it or not.

As I'm the Princess of List-making, I've come up with different ways I can work to walk in love more. Maybe you'll get ideas from some of them.

My Mom-Ever since dad passed away last year, she's had her work cut out for her. I'm the oldest of five, and I know first-hand how things get around here sometimes. (Especially right now, with two feet of snow outside!)
-Buy her flowers more often, for no reason
-Help around the house more, when I see something that needs done, do it.
-Write her more encouraging notes and letters (I did this all the time when I was little.)
-Make dinner more often
-Take her out for coffee

My Siblings!-
My brothers, Z and A
-Hang out with them more, like going out for coffee and playing card games, or killing zombies on the Xbox
-Encourage them! A has a gift for architecture, and math, and Z is awesome at everything construction-wise. They're both great snowboarders, too.
-Take them out to eat, or go hiking with them.
My sisters, E and C
I've always had to work on getting along with E. She's very dramatic, and could care less about cleaning her room, and we share one. (Only 6 1/2 more months, though. !!!) So she's probably the hardest person for me to love in my family. It's always been like that, and I've never known why. =/
-Hang out with them more-play games with C, talk to E and goof-off with the both of them.
-Buy them both flowers!
-Take them out to eat, or shopping, or to the zoo.

The boy-D.
I'm guilty of "why doesn't he buy me flowers more often or tell me how pretty I am 24/7?" in my thinking at times, which is really backwards and selfish. (Total honesty day, yikes)
-Ask about his day first, and more often.
-Make more of an effort to "look pretty"
-Cook dinner for him. :)
-Say more positive things about him. There are so many I think of, but don't always voice.
-Make him peanut-butter-chocolate things, when he acknowledges that sugar is AWESOME again.
-Two words: Gooey E-mails. :}

Friends!-
-Write someone a short "Hiya" note and drop it in the mail.
-Send a best-girl-friend chocolate, or flowers just as a thank you for putting up with me.
-Meet them for coffee, or food, or shopping, or tennis, or whatever.
-Write on their Facebook wall just to say hi.
-Just LISTEN.

Hard-to-Love-People: I currently struggle with this. Angry people at work, or people I just don't get along with!
-Be nice.
-Smile.
-Shut up.