The love that burdens us

Mom, Dad, and I were gathered in the living room while the girls washed the dishes. After a serious conversation about some solutions to some recent difficulties with the girls, Dad suggested we pray before he headed to bed. This is not at all unusual, and so I bowed my head with some resignation. Here is where we hand our cares over to God, and it is especially necessary today of all days.

You know the feeling from when you're a child, and you can't even vocalize how tired, and upset, and overwrought you are? It was in those moments that I would go to one of my parents and just lay my head on them, because they would understand. This was me tonight. Laying my head on God, hoping he would feel sorry for me. Then Daddy said, "Thank you God for the love that burdens us."

Huh?

I mentally ran that through my mind again, mouthing it at the same time. 

The love that burdens us. 

Look y'all, novels are written about love. All kinds of love. But mostly happy love. The kind that you would scale mountains and cross oceans for (to be very cliche) just to experience the euphoria it gives you.

Today I was disappointed by one of my sisters. She broke my trust, and really made me question my ability to guide her. Let's be real, I'm not experienced as a mother. I've taken over most of their training, all of their schooling, and decide much of their outside activities all by happenstance in a time of need. As my parents get older and don't like to drive, and enjoy the freedom of having grown children, it has fallen almost naturally on me. Both girls ask my permission before my parents, and the need to get this "right" is like nothing I have experienced before. The guidance of young lives is a responsibility that is indescribable. 

But today I cried in the car to Lauren Daigle's song "Trust in you" as I ate beef jerky that I'd impulse bought. I tried to analyze my feelings and decide if I was overreacting. I fought the urge to immaturely ignore her every time she spoke to me. 

True love is something we carry with us always. The love I have for these girls is a living thing. It encompasses my every interaction with them whether good or bad. The hopes I have for their futures and the kinds of people I want them to be, is all because I love them. Before them, I didn't have love like this. It's different from my other sisters in so many ways. I dissect conversations we have and question decisions I make regularly! I rejoice in their successes as if they were mine, in some ways they are! Sometimes love hurts y'all, I'm just being honest. It consumes our minds and jacks up our emotions, but I wouldn't trade it in. I just wouldn't. It never occurred to me that not just growth comes through this part of love, but joy can. The part where the love you have for someone pulls at you and causes you to do things not for the bubbly feeling it gives you, but for their good! I'm learning. I want to be able to be truly thankful for every part of love, because without the lows, the highs become mundane. I want to be able to say, "Thank You for the love that burdens us." and truly truly mean it.