Love Does

Student loans are enough to give any 25 year old ulcers.  The thought of my kid sister starting college and taking out her own loans has given me an ulcer/gray hair combination.  I would say it gives me insomnia, but really that is because I’ve slept on an air mattress for a month and some change- a story for a different day.

A few weeks ago I found myself complaining (I know you are shocked) about the dollars I was forking over for her textbooks… which are much more expensive than I remember them, I might add… when I decided to take a break from worrying about that to spend some time with the 7 little ones I mentor.

They also have been dealing with the stress of college costs.  When I asked the oldest if her financial aid package had been straightened out, she looked at me funny and said, “Didn’t I tell you?  My sister paid for it.”

I turned to her 18 year old sister.  “You did WHAT?!”

She had worked a minimum wage job serving food in a nursing home all spring and summer to save for a car.  When her sister needed her tuition paid, she gave it all up.  She is 18.  18!!!

With complete humbleness, she told me, “She couldn’t have gone to school if I didn’t  help.  She needs to go to school, I don’t really need a car.”

She did it because that’s what love does. It gives until it hurts.  

As my very favorite author, Bob Goff said in his lone book, Love Does, “ But the kind of love that God created and demonstrated is a costly one because it involves sacrifice and presence.”  Read it!  Then buy it, give it to other people, and have them read it! Then, more importantly, do it!

Bob Goff makes me go on tangents.  Back to Alice-- I needed that reminder from my sweet 18 year old friend.  Love should be that way!!!  It should be, yet the way I love and give can really miss that mark sometimes.  Anyhow, that conviction made me start crying on their couch.  It happens a lot.  They find it hilarious.  Like, too funny.  

Doesn’t it make you want to cry, too, though?!  

If I went down the list of each of my 7 kiddos, I could tell  you stories about each one of them showing that kind of love both to his or her siblings and to me in the last few months.  They fight like normal siblings do, but they also love each other- and love me- like Jesus does.  People really get it wrong when they say that they are lucky to have me, because I am 7 times as lucky to have them.

So the next time you hear me complaining about my gray hair, or the fact that I’ll never be able to see Taylor Swift in concert or go to Disney World again, kick me in the shins and say, “What would Alice do?”  I’ll shut right up.  And I’ll shake it off. See what I did there?