What is love?

This little person is easy to love most of the time.  I am not as in love with him when he bites.  And he bites a few too many times for my liking.  Despite repeated attempts at punishment to get him to stop, he bites as a means of communication.  He bites when he is hungry, thirsty, or tired.  Love bites.  

I am not thinking about love when he bites.  I am thinking about how to get him to stop that.  

But love does this amazing thing.  Love bears all things.  It's stego in the Greek, a thatch roof.

Love is a roof.  What does a roof do?  It absorbs storms when the weather takes a turn for the worst.

Love bears all things - like a roof bears wind and rain.  Love willingly carries one another's burdens. 

How does a mother continue to do that in the rainstorms of missed homework, a full time job, a husband, learning struggles, bedtime angst, childhood fears.

They just need me to love them.  

Christ's love carries the burdens that sets us all free.

Love bends and unfolds itself around others like a roof.  This is love.

And often, when I have thought about how much God loves us, those moments of bearing one another are not even painful. They are beautifully weightless. 

It's not always a bite