 |
| Our front yard |
In our 38 1/2 years of marriage Linda and I have said the word "I love you" to each other 140,525 times. That is my conservative estimate. Our phone conversations always end with one of us saying "I love you," and the other responding "I love you, too." We tell each other this when we go to bed. And throughout the day. Averaging only 5 "I love yous" a day, apiece, totals 140,525 of them. I love Linda; Linda loves me.
I'm thinking of this additive love this morning as I'm reading a chapter of Jerry Sittser's A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows through Loss. Sittser lost his wife, his mother and a 4 year old daughter in a car crash. A drunken driver ran head on into his minivan. He and 3 of his children survived, but 3 generations were wiped out instantly. He writes:
"When someone suffers the loss of a relationship, they lose something that is both precious and incomplete. This problem of incompleteness is aggravated in the case of those whose relationship at the time of loss is at a low point. A spouse is killed just after an argument at home. A wife tries to work out the differences with her husband but finally gives up, settling for a divorce. Parents of a wayward teenager regret how much they neglected her as she was growing up. The saying may be trivial: "You can never say 'I love you' too much, because you never know when you won't be able to say it anymore," but it touches on a truth. Loss takes what we might do and turns it into what we can never do. Loss freezes life into a snapshot. We are stuck with what was instead of what could have been." (96)
By this time tomorrow, if God allows: 140, 535.
