ToBeLoved

Funny how a word can hit you new when you really stop to sit with it, let the letters and sound fall over a heart. Chip away a bit at its layers.

Beloved.

It’s always been one of my favorites, and I’ll admit that when Michael chooses it from among all other names and writes it with its rounded edges and upright “l,” attaching it to my name, the inside of me does sway and settle down deep.

It’s the name of a favorite book by Toni Morrison that I devoured in college, and when I read it, something in me knew again that I wanted to try and write, to mold word pictures from clay while leaving spaces between the seen and those things of the air and spirit which are not.

Surely, there is the kind of love that does, and if there existed a word in our language for the one who’s been the recipient of that active kind of loving, it might be “doloved,” and you’d know when you’d done been “doloved.”

But to “be loved.” Beloved. Whether the girls remember to make their mama a Valentine, whether I feel loved in the moments when Michael and I struggle to decide on a place to eat out and bicker at 4:30 on a Valentines afternoon, the truth is that I am loved.

I’m thinking of the gold circles imprinted with my girls’ initials on the necklace given me by my sister because she knew how much I’d love it for how much I love them. I love wrapping this around my neck, keeping their letters right close to the place of pounding, beating, being.

And maybe it’s like that for God — our initials strung one pounded circle after another all the way round, close to the place his heart beats love.

Joining up again today with the Five Minute Friday community of friends over at Lisa-Jo‘s where we write for five minutes, refrain from extreme editing and encourage one another freely. Today began with the prompt: BELOVED.

Five Minute Friday

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