©Wendy Scott
As I mentioned in my last post, we recently moved our kids back to college. For my husband and I, this was a given. We have helped move both of our kids in and out of dorm rooms and apartments since their freshmen years.
It’s not that we enjoy carrying stuff up and down stairs, especially in the Florida heat, but for us, it’s important to be there for our kids (in this case, literally). Even though they are both capable of moving without us, many hands makes light work.
So in mid-August, we sweated our way up and down stairs to their third (third!!) story apartment, helped them unpack, bought a few things they needed, stocked the kitchen, and left them with leftovers for dinner for a few nights. We accomplished quite a lot over a day and a half.
Our kids both thanked us several times over the weekend for the help but then several hours after we got back to our (once again) empty nest, we received a message from our son saying how much it meant to him that we took our weekend to help move them in. If you’re a parent of teens/young adults, you’ll know how much something like this means.
Of course, I told him we loved him and will always be around to help him. If it’s one thing I want our kids to 💯 know, it’s that they are the most important people in the world to us. But what I really should have said is that this is just one of the ways we show we love them.
What I should have said is that love is a verb.
If you tell someone they are important to you but your actions don’t back that up, then it’s a pretty empty sentiment.
Love isn’t so much what you say, it’s what you do. Love is being there for someone, love is helping them when they need it even if they don’t ask for it, love is accepting them just the way they are, love is asking them how their day was, love is listening. Love is unconditional and makes no demands.
Love is woven into small thoughtful gestures much more so than grandiose splashy ones. Love is the sum of all of these actions over time.
I want both of my kids to have people in their lives who show them that love is a verb and that starts with us, their parents.
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