All children have special bedtime rituals.  For Mary, her bedtime ritual is to get zipped up in a sleep sack, put her pacifier or dummy in her mouth, and to cuddle up with her musical puppy.  I squeeze the puppy to start the music and then give it to her.  She rubs the puppy’s ears or hugs him.  This routine is extra special because this was Henry’s puppy.  Henry loved his puppy.  It was a gift from his great-grandmother who died last year.  Every night I would start the music and give him his puppy.  He would lie there, looking up at me, holding his puppy.  I always thought it was the most peaceful scene – a baby in his crib, cuddling his favorite animal, being softly sung to sleep with sweet lullabies.  It seemed a living example of love.

Then when Henry died, it was like all love had died with him.  My heart felt like a scorched wasteland where everything had been burned.  I was sure that nothing would ever grow there again.  For a long time I wanted to keep Henry’s room and his things exactly as they were.  They were the only link I had left to him and I wanted to preserve them.  When we had to take down his room to move, it was difficult for me. http://thewayofjoy.com/2017/08/02/a-time-for-everything/

But as I see Mary holding puppy and loving him, it reminds me that love was never meant to be a shrine.  It cannot be held or kept for ourselves.  Love is like perfect and ripe fresh fruit that must be eaten right away.  If we try to hold onto it, it only goes bad or shrivels up.  Love can only be given away.  And the irony is that the more we give it away, the more of ourselves that we give away, the more we have available to give away.  Love grows and grows and compounds on itself.

I think that is how God feels about us.  Every time I see that sweet baby holding the puppy of her brother whom she never met, I remember that we received her exactly on the one-year anniversary of the day we lost her brother, and I am reminded of just how much God loves me too.  http://thewayofjoy.com/2017/08/09/speechless/  I am reminded that God’s love for humanity is so great, I can’t comprehend it.  It is like he has given each of us millions of dollars in quarters, and our job is to spend our lives giving all the quarters away.  How rich and how close to our true purpose we are when we start giving freely!