Letter: What Has Love Got to Do with It?

It wasn’t like we were going to go to our church this morning anyway. 

Our church is in Tennessee and we’re in Washington.

As snow fell intermittently with the sun vying for equal time, we watched the service online.

A pair of ducks paddled out on the lake and from our window they seemed to be in a race, one passing the other and in turn being passed.

The three-part picture she had made from a recent trip to Mt. Rainier rested on the floor, one day to be shipped home where her family can see what a real mountain looks like.

My favorite gift of this past Christmas, my notebook, a gift from her daughter, lay open containing my sermon notes but mostly listing lots and lots of stuff we’ve got to do while here in Washington.

In Washington where she fell the other day while carrying yet another box into storage and now wears a brace on her wrist to support her sprained thumb which hand, she insists, can still hold a paint brush as we prepare my house for sale.

“There in Tennessee I was retired. And happy. And comfortable. And warm. And now? Now I take aspirin for my aches and pains. Now I have no polish on my fingernails. Now my work clothes are paint-splattered and sweat-stained and I am too tired to care how I look when we go back into town for more supplies.

“And why do I do this?” she grinned as she laughingly continued to complain at the poor state of affairs in which she pretended to find herself.

“Because I love you.”

Then, jabbing with her sprained-and-wrapped thumb at the fruit she’d carefully arranged on her spoon in her cereal bowl, she said, “Like this banana and strawberry, we are better together.”

What has love got to do with it?

Everything.