love

Things are a little crazy right now, or more accurately things are lacking sleep right now. Valentine's Day was 10 days ago? At least love doesn't confine itself to one day.

True love isn't in flowers and chocolates. It's found in homemade pork chops, SportCenter, NCAA football on the Playstation, and the midnight showing of Jurassic Park. At least, for me that's where it started.

5 years ago this month, Cory and I started dating. In some ways, time has certainly flown by. It doesn't feel like that long since we were sharing our Valentine's day meatloaf on a couch and watching TV with Kooy. (They didn't have a kitchen table). I'm so glad that we could have such a relaxed Valentine's Day even though we had only been dating for a week. More importantly, it's stayed that way. We have our heart shaped courses - jello, meatloaf & brownies, but other than that it's all about just being together.

And that's why I fell in love with Cory. He's confident in himself and finds the value in everyone. From the first time we spent time together, he made me feel comfortable. He is so comfortable with himself that I had no reason to worry. And I am good at worrying... and feeling self-conscious... and being sure that no one else wants to be with me. Not when I'm with Cory. Very early on, I knew there was nothing I could do that was so terrible he would stop loving me or stop helping me find who God wants me to be.

Slowly, I'm learning that it's ok to have that confidence in other relationships too. In the next five years, I pray that I will learn how to show unconditional love even half as well as my husband does. There are too many people that I would love to know better except fear is standing in my way. I want to have no fear that they might laugh at my imperfections or gasp at my failures. Only by taking those steps can I show others that I don't care about their problems; all I want is to be a friend!