I’d be remiss, in this month of the most infamous holiday of commercial love…to not address, at least some semblance of it’s passing. I’m referring, of course, to Valentine’s Day. On average, 23 million roses are purchased and gifted as a demonstrative expression of the love we hold, share and give.
I’ve spent a lot of time in my life defining for myself what love is. Every part of its definition, leads me away from the commercial celebrations of it…and more towards the consistence & mundaneness of it’s reality instead. What do I mean by that exactly? Well when I think of the biggest loves of my life…I think of my daughters, now 18 &20. I recall specifically a time when my now 18 yr old, ten years ago realized something was wrong with her precious little heart. This non symptomatic, virtually impossible to detect heart defect…landed us at 2am in the ER at Lurie’s Children more nights than I ever imagined would be our story that summer. Each time we were sent home & told she was probably experiencing some type of emotional stress & the symptoms were in her head…my peace was quasi restored. Only to begin the same cycle, every few days, for almost two months until eventually…we learned her heart was severely defected and now killing her fragile body. It was an unbelievable miracle that she was still alive, as the less than 1% of people born with her rare defect usually never lived past 4 yrs old & in those anomalous instances, the defect was only then diagnosed typically through “sudden death.”
It was the first time I learned that sometimes a walk of faith…needed to be more like a stomp of faith. Watching one of the two people I will love most ardently in this world, with her 8 yr old chest sliced open and her frail body hooked up to every machine imaginable. Her tiny lips taped to a breathing tube…epitomized love for me in every crevice of my being. There was pain and suffering, there was extensive discomfort and the hard work of recovery, there was safety and trust in knowing…we were standing together, and so much love enveloping our beautiful struggle. Roses & prickles.
I used to think that roses had thorns. I’ve since learned the tiny, sharp growths on roses are actually prickles, according to botanists. The irony, this flower of such universal demonstrative love…has embedded all over it’s body, sharp protrusions that can prove to be quite dangerous- resulting in infection & injury if we don’t handle these ‘love symbols’ with a high level of intent and mindfulness. I’m not sure where the ideology came from that love is a state of constant bliss and happy feelings. I’m not clear on why we delude ourselves into thinking that love doesn’t require intent, mindfulness, pruning, work…and is itself constructed by both the bloom of the beautiful rose- and as critically the unconditional awareness and complete acceptance of it’s prickles.
Like love…life, our days, our everything’s…have both roses and prickles. They are all a part of the collective beauty of our stories and inevitably of our love. And if no one has reminded you today…you are incredibly loved- for both your roses and your prickles. Please keep blooming!