During a text conversation with my old college roommate, Jorge, the typical conversation that seems to crop up with old friends I haven't spoken with for some time began anew. "How do you like being a dad?" he asked.
"I love it. I'm training up a whole minion of my own for when I take over the world," I replied. "I even write a blog about my (mis)adventures in parenting." [In which you are now engaged in reading, might I add!]
I returned the question as he is now awaiting his second offspring. His reply was simple but incredibly insightful. Jorge simply stated, "It has shown me a whole new side of love."
At the time it was kind of a nice remark, but it stuck with me through the night and when I awoke this morning I decided it must be a theme I would install into this particular blog.
It seems I have also discovered this different side of love as a parent. In the English language we have so many different meaning for the word. One may state, "I love my car, I love a good hamburger and I love my wife." However, to marry my car is absurd and to eat my wife is cannibalism, not to mention the last time I drove a Big Mac I just got special sauce all over my hands.
I don't know if Jorge meant the love that is returned from our kids - like how my daughter can sense when I am stressed from work and comes to hug my knee, or pat me on the back if I'm sitting on the floor yelling at a football game. Of course, as a parent, you love your kid in a similar manner, putting band-aids on ouchies and reading to her all hours of the night so she can sleep, making special trips to the drug store for children's tylenol, and on and on.
Its just something to think about today, the different sides of love we experience, both as parents and simply as the relational beings we were created to be.
