Being loved

 “I want to be in a relationship where you telling me you love me is just a ceremonious validation of what you already show me.”
― Steve Maraboli


As a young girl I can remember really looking forward to getting married - to the wedding day. Wearing a stunning dress, carrying perfect flowers and walking down the aisle to beautiful music etc.... I had those rose coloured spectacles about a perfect wedding day and a perfect marriage! I read the books and magazines that told me what it was all about- I believed in all the romance. I needed cards and flowers to tell me that I was loved. My wedding day was beautiful and I loved it but our marriage has had its struggles. I didn't marry a romantic man who had read all the books and I definitely wasn't the perfect wife!

This week I have been thinking about what it means to be loved and I think that you really know you are loved in the hardest of times. I have had the privilege of knowing how much I am loved because we have been through such hard times. I wear a ring on my finger that Paul bought for me the week I was diagnosed with breast cancer - it reminds me of all that he has had to go through over the last 3 1/2 years. His life too has changed so much and so has his future. He patiently cares for me despite my moaning and groaning. He picks up the pieces of our lives when I can't cope. He has shown me every day what love is and it isn't in the cards and flowers but it is in the every day actions and the sacrificial giving. It is in the holding of the bucket and the hearing of bad news, it is in the cooking and the cleaning, it is in the holding in the night - time and the listening to the moans, it is in the not turning from the scars and the reading when sleep won't come. Who could have guessed that when he promised to love me 'in sickness and in health' there would be so much sickness (sometimes literally) ? I am so thankful to be loved like this and I know that I am so, so fortunate. Thank you Paul for loving me.