Lovies

Break will be over a week early for me. At least, what I was looking forward to out of break. What was I looking forward to? Well, a snippet of insight would be about 10 seconds ago when Deb stood at the door of my room, held up the Glenn Beck book I got her, said, "This is a good pooping book--I especially like that it starts out talking about capitalism," and proceeded to the bathroom. Surely she's in there defecating all of her hyper-conservative frustrations out as I type. Gotta love her.

And I really do. I could go into our lack of loving relationship in the past here, but I don't really think that's necessary. Sometimes sisters just don't get along. You understand. Now that she lives in Tennessee, though, with a brand spankin' new baby, it's really hard for everyone to see her go back after her 10-day stay. Mom was rocking little baby Leo for hours last night and muttered, "What am I gonna do without my boy?" There was hope in her voice, though. The promise of seeing Leo weekly through the mighty powers of webcams and the promise of visiting him in TN again come spring. But it's still sad. The distance. Sharing lives via photographs and videos rather than meaningful looks and hugs. It's truly a blessing to even get that much, but it's still not ideal.

But it does stress for me how important it is to make a family out of who you got whenever and wherever. Ever since I worked at camp, I've realized how incredibly easy it is to just love people. It is. Don't tell me it isn't, because I know it is. It's easy to view my friends at school as family. It's easy to view my friends at home as family. It was alllll too easy to plop myself down in the middle of a campground in Middle-Of-Nowhere, Pennsylvania, and consider the entire 100-person staff and influx of children family.

On top of that, it should be easy to call whoever happens to read these words family and that whole room of strangers I will never see again family and those random strangers I will probably never even meet (or even come within a 100-mile radius of) across the globe family.

I wrote a blog post once back in high school about how strange it is that we have one word for love, yet so many different types of love... love for family, love for friends, love for pets, love for inanimate objects. I proceeded to make up random sub-categories of love out of the fun of it, but now I figure I shouldn't stress the differences (especially since the word "oblendok" probably isn't the best as an expression of love for a stranger since it sounds more like one of L. Ron Hubbard's alien rulers). Once you get all root of the root of the root about love, you wind up at God... a.k.a. the Beginning and the End. Because God is All and in all. Because life really is that amazing and great because of Him. LOVE really is that amazing and great because of Him.

So now I'm gonna go love up on some Martins before they peace out this evening. And then I'm gonna love up on my last week of break just for the fun of it.