lamiki

This year for National Blog Posting Month, I’m writing prompts for a small group of bloggers. Here’s tomorrow’s prompt, and here’s the list of all NaBloPoMo prompts before this.

Prompt #18 (Nov 20)

Love is a gigantic word that’s definition and how we use it has evolved over time. There is family love, life partner love, BFF-always-and-forever love, and OMG-I-loooooovvvvveeeeee-that love. Tell me a love story about one version of “love”–what it represents, what it means, and how you use it (or don’t).

Tell me a love story:

• There is no love like a family by Harmony on Harmonious Mess
• Letting Love Win by Berrak on The World is My Jester

Photo by heyFilbert

Six years ago today, I walked down the aisle wearing something old-new-borrowed-and-blue and walked up the aisle with holding my husband’s hand. We married young, and when we’re in a room full of nearly weds, at twenty-seven and thirty years old, we are the old married couple.

This morning at breakfast after giggling each other awake, Johnny and I filtered through the past six years (and nine total together): celebrating the highs, acknowledging the lows, thinking about the things we learned along the way, and plotting where we will go in the future.

Six lessons we learned and prioritized over the last six years…

1) Grow together. When Johnny and I wed at 21 and 24, we vowed to keep growing together. We knew we were entering a decade that would define who we are as adults and the only way through our twenties would be to grow our way through them. And the promise we made was to make sure we grew through it together.

You are a different person today than you will be tomorrow. And the only way you’ll survive being together forever is growing together.  (more…)

Valentine’s Day reminds me of the four years I spent working at a flower shop while I was in high school. It reminds me of working late on school nights and peeling guard petals off of roses in a cold, damp, but enormously lively warehouse. It reminds me of a city cop doing parking lot control to keep the frantic lovers under control when they stopped to buy mementos of their love on the way home from work. It reminds me of endless buckets of endless buckets full of flowers that dwindled, slowly, to nothing as 9 o’clock rolled around and the shop and registers were finally quiet.

But most importantly, it reminds me of the first time that I tried a new job at work and kicked ass doing it.

Valentine’s Day reminds me of hard work and what it really mean’s to prove yourself to yourself.

So this Valentine’s Day, I wish you love and the ability to kick ass – for you. Because if there’s one thing that is for certain, it’s that you gotta love you.

Photo Credit: Beardnan