Love

When it came time for our oldest son to attend Sunday School, I balked. My late husband was no help. The concept of Sunday School, a foreign affair. Tony being a product of parochial school. In his mind, we simply attended worship on Sunday. Religious education taken over by nuns during the week. Except there were no nuns at the private Montessori school Ricky attended.

At the time the trappings surrounding God, Christianity, Jesus, and what seemed to me the veneration of Jesus’ violent death made me uncomfortable. My other reservations pressed harder on my heart though. The Sunday school teacher was functionally illiterate and used inappropriate-for-young-children theology.

My mother calmly clarified things for me one day. “All young children need to learn is God is love. The rest can come later.”

A seemingly simple statement at first. Yet one centering me through many years of my own questioning and parenting the budding spiritual explorations of our children.

I think a lot about life, faith, and God since Tony died. Sudden death forces the living to recalibrate every moment of every day especially in the beginning months of loss. At first, I lived in trauma’s shock. Forced to make decisions as my mind struggled to form even the slightest neural connection. My body shook for any number of reasons—left over adrenalin, fatigue, and lack of food being the most common. Our children felt neglected or in losing their father they also lost the me they once knew.

Early one morning during the first fall of our grief I hid once again in our bed. A place rendered only mine now. In a few harrowing minutes on an otherwise bucolic day. Seeking refuge beneath the warm covers from all the overwhelming post-death tasks. The weight of blankets keeping me tethered to the earth when nothing else seemed to.

Curled up, I remembered a few things. Bits of wisdom lost for months in trauma’s chaos. What I knew from my years as an early child development specialist claiming some  brain space once more. Along with hearing Tony speak of his clinical work for over two decades. And from learning about and from God. A sense of clarity permeated my thinking for once in these otherwise arduous days as time ticked in internal and external tumult.

My job now, as I saw it, was to love. Love our sons Ricky and Paul first and foremost. Love myself. And in loving the three of us through this unbelievable time, loving God as well. Sort of like the well-known verse from the Gospel of Mark known as the “Greatest Commandment.” Only in my reality used in tandem instead of in a linear line of love.

Love looked at first like me re-teaching my mind and hands how to cook. Because we were all hungry. And the food coming in from church, friends, and neighbors didn’t always fit our collective, complicated, food sensitivities and allergies. And because my sons needed the reassurance of my presence in the kitchen every evening. Like before.  And we all needed cooking smells filling, what seemed to us, an empty home.

And slowly all the wonderful works of attachment theorists, Bowlby and Ainsworth, once embraced crept back into my thoughts. Combined with this quirky need to read Tony’s professional library. Particularly his book Facing Heartbreak along with texts on love, relationships, and trauma. Once again awed by how modern human development theory, research, and healing protocols mirror God’s message through scripture.

Now, after twenty-one years of marriage, twenty years of parenting, and eighteen months into grief and trauma recovery, I know love sustains me. Through four simple words formed into two directives. Reminded of each time I open our refrigerator, a well-worn magnet catching my eye. Beautiful words centering me as a woman, parent, child development specialist, writer, widow, seminarian, and human being. Words I see every time I drive Interstate 35 near Lakeville, on the outskirts of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. Wearing this road thin because of seminary, work, family, and doctor’s appointments. Words right there on the West side of the road. On a simple billboard as if stating the obvious.

“Love God. Love Others.”

Words holding my heart each time. An abiding command anchoring me here on earth when I so often want to fly away or hide under the covers. Weaving my life with others through relationships. Some old, some new, and some yet to be born. Centering my soul like a plumb line in the ongoing restructuring and rebuilding of human existence.

³⁰ you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these (Mark 12:30-31).” NRSV

“Wheel” courtesy of Pixabay.