Fall in Love

           Since it’s the season of graduation and we get to hear lots of advice of how to live life, I decided to write my own little speech. It’s simple enough; my advice to graduates and to us all is to fall in love.

         Fall in love with yourself, with being a child of God, created in that perfect image. Fall in love with your Creator who formed you in your mother’s womb, knitted you to be just as you are, while knowing who you will be. Fall in love with the miracle shining back at you in your reflection.

         Fall in love with the world and its magic of starry nights and changing moons, yellow sun and greening earth. Fall in love with the dry desert soil with its hidden seeds and nutrients, with the tender shoot and thin blades of grass. The cottonwoods and rivers, the rocks and creeks and small speckled eggs of blue birds. Love the breeze that changes things, the drift of clouds across the sky, the lean of blooms on stalks to light. Love the color of things, the way the world turns and breathes and tilts. Fall in love with this round planet with its vast horizons and deep waters, its layers of ash and stone and dirt.

         Fall in love with your family, mothers and fathers and embarrassing uncles, your siblings, your spouse and your children, how they all learned your dark secrets and still make a place for you and call it home. For the moment that your beloveds took your breath away, remember that, hold onto it, and never ever let the memory of that moment leave you.

         Fall in love with being yoked, with having companionship and friendship, with promises made even while knowing how hard they are to keep. Fall in love with the stuff you build together, the places you go, the dreams you make, the inside jokes that only you know. Fall in love with all of those connected to you because marriage and family and friends are what will hold you up when the earth quakes and everything shatters and they are the ones who sooner or later will have to take your calls. That’s just what they do, so fall in love with that.

         Fall in love with Saturday mornings with their chores and games, with church and the silence arriving in prayer, with Thursday night spaghetti and Tuesday’s breakfast cheerios, and the taste of ripe strawberries and the smell of a burger on the grill and the chill of ice cold lemonade sliding down the back of your throat.

         Fall in love with the way your body moves, for the delight it feels, the touch of water and sun, the hand caressing yours and the ache in muscles well used, for eyes that see and ears that hear and arms that can hold more than you thought, feet that take you from here to there, your heart that breaks and heals, breaks and heals.

         Fall in love with the moments that make you laugh so hard you hurt and the ones you wish you could take away or at the very least, forget. Fall in love with them all because every one of them makes up this life that is yours, this life that is you.

         Fall in love with what you have and what you want and fall in love with giving it all away because in the end we discover that it is never the things we own that make us happy. Fall in love with mercy and forgiveness and the unpredictability that is forged within the hours of every single day. With hope and faith. Fall in love with love, the love that makes you patient and kind and keeps you from being rude and irritable or having to have your own way.

         Fall in love because all of it, all of this, all of life happens so fast and it is all so meaningful and not, important and not, necessary and not; so that the only thing that really lets you surrender at the end of it all is to know quite simply that you have experienced the sweetest and most thrilling part of what it is all about anyway, but only if you fall in love.

You are the light of the world!

Yours,

Lynne