Sometimes Love Appears as Furniture

Oh Darling, the other day I heard a beautiful story of love from one of my clients that I just *had* to share with you.  

It touches on something important I’ve been thinking about recently: the word “love” as a verb.

Not “love” in the traditional way that we’re used to thinking about it.  

I’m not talking about the “love” you use to sign emails to your kids.

Nor the way you squeal “I LOVE THIS SONG!!!” when your song plays on the radio. 

I’m also not talking about the “love ya” at the end of a phone call, cuz, come on, let’s be honest here, how many times have you embarrassingly ended a phone call with a coworker with a thoughtless, “Love you” out of habit before you hung up?

I’m talking about the tangible action of love. Last week we talked about how to recognize acts of love and y’all did not disappoint.

Here’s just a little excerpt from the message I got this weekend:

“Beth,

I can’t believe I’m emailing you already with a success story, but here we are, lol.

So, this past pandemic has been super-hard on our relationship. My partner lost his job and started a new one where he had to travel a lot. During this time, I’ve been working exclusively from home, venturing out of the corporate world and into the freelance world about six months ago, so my social life is in a bit of upheaval too.

My office isn’t set up yet, so I’ve been spending a LOT of time on the couch. Now, we don’t like change very much in our household, so we’ve had the exact same couches for over ten years.

He bought these couches back when he was still a bachelor, so they were brown (it matches EVERYTHING!) and had cupholders--- not really my style. Plus, they were super lumpy and uncomfortable

So I asked for new couches. Big deal right? We’ll shop together and end up with something generic that matches our current boring living room. Nothing exciting.

But then my partner told me to “Go Wild.”

And so I did. I went deep into researching and fell in love with the most floofy, most obnoxiously teal couches I’d ever seen. I never thought my partner’d go for ‘em, so I kept looking.

But then I remembered what you taught me and sheepishly asked, “What about these?”

He looked me in the eye and said, I KID YOU NOT!!!, “Do they make you happy?”

He could tell by the smile on my face that they 100% did.

And so now, Beth, I’m writing you this email from my overstuffed-but-still-stylish teal couch, while my laptop sits on a bright yellow coffee table, which is perched atop a brightly colored Persian rug.  Once I got permission to indulge in the teal couches, the rest of the room kind of fell into place.

I am finally living a life that feels as colorful as me and I have you to thank for that!

There is no way I’d be relaxing in my dream living room if I hadn’t spent time taking your class this fall. All the lessons I learned helped me to gain confidence in myself and the things I truly like… not just the ones I think I’m supposed to.”

Then she signed it “Love, Jacki”.

And you know what? 

This time, I know she really meant love, cuz I could really FEEL love.  🥰