If love wasn't about love

Love is on my mind, as always.

 I always talk about how it's so deep and powerful. How it's a feeling that is more meaningful than a smile or even a laugh...and I love laughter. LOVE is AMAZING, WONDERFUL, HAPPY, PERFECT... I could go on with positive synonyms forever. How can you say how much you love love, without using the world love...? Anyway, you get the idea.

You might ask, how do you know Lauren? You aren't in love... you are just a lonely little college girl... well call me crazy, but I have faith in love. I know that I have the power to be in love. And if I find someone worth every emotion and ounce of trust in my body, I will share that love with him.

Because I have such a passion and desire to love, I know that the day I'm lucky enough to find that man, that I will never let it go. That day may be close and it may be when gray hairs are on my head, but I can just keep on dreaming, wishing and waiting.

Tonight I was thinking. I'm not shallow, just an FYI. Love is love. Love isn't money, looks, dates... love is simply love. But I wanted to write a blog tonight that is called if love wasn't about love. If I didn't fall in love with a guy for who he was and how he made me feel, then I would be "in love" based on these...

If love WASN'T about love, this is what I would want:

I would want flowers delivered just because. I would go on dates to fancy restaurants. My door would always be opened. My chair would always be pulled out and scooted in for me. If we need to press play on the DVD without a remote... he would press play. We're watching a movie? Romanceeee or musical, baby. He would like soy sauce in his macaroni, just like me. He'd like the first row of the upper section in the movie theater. He'd like to be warm rather than cold. He'd get my a drink just be seeing I could be thirsty. He'd make me breakfast and drive me to where I needed to be. I would never take out the trash or mow the lawn. I would always get massages and pedicures. I wouldn't even have to worry about bills, taxes or schedules. I would share all the household chores, but unloading the dishwasher and vacuuming. I would never drive on long drives. I would never be the one to fill the gas tank. 

...what to add, what to add.

I'm not a brat and I'm not serious. I know that's not practical. A girl can dream though... Twilight's not practical, but the female population sucked that one up... ha. 

In all reality love is sacrifice, commitment, trust and happiness. Love is more than wanting to watch my choice of movie, or making him do all the driving... it's working day in and day out to support a family, waking up in the middle of the night happily to comfort your scared child, sharing the gross jobs... I look at what my parents have... that is what love is. My parents know how to love each other, love their friends and love their kids. I've never seen more sacrifice and service then from my mother and father: Sandy and Daren Falter. I'm lucky to have their example, because now I know what to look for and how to love.

AMAZING Stuff by President Hinckley:

"When I was a little boy, we children traded paper hearts at school on Valentine’s Day. At night we dropped them at the doors of our friends, stamping on the porch and then running in the dark to hide.

Almost without exception those valentines had printed on their face, “I love you.” I have since come to know that love is more than a paper heart. Love is of the very essence of life. It is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yet it is more than the end of the rainbow. Love is at the beginning also, and from it springs the beauty that arches across the sky on a stormy day. Love is the security for which children weep, the yearning of youth, the adhesive that binds marriage, and the lubricant that prevents devastating friction in the home; it is the peace of old age, the sunlight of hope shining through death. How rich are those who enjoy it in their associations with family, friends, church, and neighbors.

I am one who believes that love, like faith, is a gift of God. I agree with the expression, “Love cannot be forced, love cannot be coaxed and teased.” (Pearl Buck, in The Treasure Chest, ed. Charles L. Wallis, New York: Harper and Row, 1965, p. 165.)

In our youth, we sometimes acquire faulty ideas of love, that it can be imposed or simply created for convenience. I noted the following in a newspaper column some years ago:

“One of the grand errors we tend to make when we are young is supposing that a person is a bundle of qualities, and we add up the individual’s good and bad qualities, like a bookkeeper working on debits and credits.

“If the balance is favorable, we may decide to take the jump (into marriage). … The world is full of unhappy men and women who married because … it seemed to be a good investment.

“Love, however, is not an investment; it is an adventure. And when marriage turns out to be as dull and comfortable as a sound investment, the disgruntled party soon turns elsewhere. …

“Ignorant people are always saying, ‘I wonder what he sees in her [or him],’ not realizing that what he [or she] sees in her [or him] (and what no one else can see) is the secret essence of love.” (Sydney J. Harris,Deseret News.)"

The day I fall in love, I will be entirely happy to have someone, not to have all of that ridiculous list done for me, but to serve and to listen to and to comfort and help and have fun with and trust and cook with and clean with and talk with and to hold as I fall asleep.