I walk with love...

I drive a good bit for work and I have taken to listening to a number of podcasts. Sometimes I find little interesting things about the world to run home and tell Patrick (my husband). Like did you know there are deep subsurface microbes that live in the mud at the bottom of the ocean. These microbes refuse to grow in labs and appear to have a different view of time and energy. Or did you know opera was the first music to explain the plite of man. How about, did you know there is a group called Story Corps. They have created the largest collection of the stories of humankind and these stories are a collection housed in the Library of Congress. Their mission is to "preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world." Any one can participate, their app has interview questions to start conversation and the stories are amazingly simple, complex, dark, light, and all beautiful. 
I was listening to a string of these interviews as I drove home one day. As I listened to people, just ordinary people, talk and tell their stories I was inspired and restored. During an interview between an elderly husband and wife the husband speaks of their marriage and you can feel the pride and joy in his words; without seeing him you feel his smile as he talks to his wife, and she giggles at his words. Then he says these words, "I walk with love." Those four words struck me. I wrote them down - I walk with love. This post note has sat in my car for a months now, becoming wrinkled and folded, moved and stuck to multiple surfaces, collecting fuzz and sand and pen scratches. These words, however still run though my mind; a record playing over and over with the clicks and pops of life happening behind it. 
Perhaps it was just good timing or maybe these words held something more for me in that moment. I began to look around me, watching people interact with each other. Were they walking with love? Was I? I wasn't even sure what this meant, yet I was seeking it in others and in myself. Was it a simple gesture or was it the heart's grandeur? Was it something only found in romantic love or was it suited to all types of love we experience?
As I watched people I saw things in a different filter. I watched coworkers laugh and smile, even in the face of the tough work they do. I knew they were walking with love. I watched my Facebook feed show people highlighting their lives with photos of family and sunrises. I knew they were walking with love. I listened to a mother teach her son colors as she pushed the grocery cart. I knew she was walking with love. Over these past days I saw smiles and tears; I heard laughter and yelling; I felt a warm touch and the cold of an empty room. I saw all of these clicks and pops of life while the record still played in the back of my head- "I walk with love." 
I needed to answer something still- what did this mantra mean to me?
It would be easier if I could cut and paste my soul to this page, complete with the footnotes of my heart and epilogue of my mind; that would perhaps make more sense.  I looked back at moments in my life to try to make sense of the rooting of these words, the foundation of love. And I found people and moments in my life where I watched these words lived. My parents who showed us the beauty in the world, through my mother's undying faith in mankind to my father's explanation of the expansiveness of the universe. My brother who would always ask if I was okay, even if he was the one who pushed me down. I looked at family friends who spent nights at our dinner table sharing the day's little moments. I watch my friends as they talk about their children and their voices raise with delight.  I remembered moments with friends playing till the day got dark and making sure we all got home safe. I see Patrick as he looks at me and smiles the slightest smile that only I see. In that moment I know that I walk beside love in my life because he walks with an unending love for me, even in my weakest moments. It is in these moments with family and friends that I learned what it was to walk with love. I watched it happening all around me. 
I find I have learned a great deal in my life about this idea of walking with love. But was I living these lessons in my life? It is hard to look at one's self and wonder if you are living up to the love you see around you. How do you compare your actions to the actions of those who fill your cup to the brim? I figured this out-- you don't. Here is what I know, I walk with love, because I know love. From my first day I have been surrounded by love in the most wondrous, unusual, scary, and beautiful ways. Today I can admit to myself that I walk with love. Love for my family, for all they have given to me. Love for my coworkers, for all they have given of themselves to make things a little better. Love for those who have taught me the little lessons in life, for all the moments they took to teach me.  
But there is one love that oversees it all for me. A love that proves to me I have to be walking with love because this particular love warms my heart on the coldest nights and frees my caged soul. The love I didn't know the words for when I was 13 and it first showed up. This love that has walk with me for 24 years. When I heard the podcast gentleman say that life was better because he walked with love, I knew one thing, my life was better because I walked with love. A love that I have slammed the door on, pulled my hand away from, cried over, yelled at, and fallen for with every part of my being since the day he walked into my 8th grade Algebra class.  This love gives me the strength to walk with love in every other encounter in my life. This love is like a shadow that needs no light to follow me around. It  does not walk behind or in front, instead it only walks with.  I realized walk with love as over over time I have forgotten that there was any other way to walk.

Thank you to all of those who have shown me how to walk with the grace of love. I hope that others see in me that same love you bestowed in your lessons. 
To my husband thank you for being the love I walk with everyday.