All We Felt Was Love

When I moved away from home for the first time at eighteen years old, I only knew how to cook two things: macaroni and cheese out of a box and French toast. And I'm pretty sure making blue box mac and cheese does not qualify as cooking.

Every Saturday morning that I didn't go home, I would fill my college apartment with the smell of warm cinnamon and vanilla and maple syrup. I made French toast to make myself feel at home.

So tonight, when it came time to have our final meal as a family of six, I thought there was nothing more appropriate to eat than French toast (and bacon and eggs of course).

I don't know if they'll ever even remember our home. Part of me hopes they don't remember the details. I hope they don't remember the things. I hope they simply remember a feeling.

I want them to remember the way it smelled and the way it felt safe.

I want them to remember that they were always well fed and greatly loved.

I want them to know deep down inside somewhere that someone was fighting for them and praying for them and believing for them.

I don't necessarily want them to remember us and the French toast and the details. I want them to remember being loved, feeling loved, knowing love.

One day when my kids ask about this experience and want to know why we did it, I hope I remember to tell them that we did it because we felt called to love those whom no one else was loving.

We felt called to love even though we knew it would hurt.

We felt called to leave our comfortable lives in search of more of Christ.

And at the end of it all, after the tears and the doubt and the frustration and the anger and the sacrifice.....

All we felt was love.

......day 331 of a year of writing.....