Last night we celebrated "Just Because I Love You Day," with our kids by having dinner at one of our favorite resturants. Raylan and I enjoyed our signature cocktail, a Greyhound with Grey Goose Vodka! We started celebrating"JBILY DAY" eleven years ago instead of Valentines Day. Over the years we have expanded it to several times a year and sometimes include our kids in the celebrating. Raylan has always said if I need a day to tell you "I Love You" than I'm not doing a very good job the rest of the year. So it became our way of rebelling. We're over forty, so this is the most we can handle.
Still it's Valentines Day and what would Valentines Day be without a sappy love letter or in this case a corny love email. I sent this to my Hubby back in May.
Hubby-
Did you hear the story about the man who was stranded in the middle of nowhere and prayed to God to save him from his imminent death. A short time later a helicopter lands and asks to take him to safety and the man responds no thanks, God will save me. A short time later, a boat comes to shore and asks the man to take him to safety, and the man responds no thanks, god will save me. Then finally a car pulls up and asks to take the man to safety, and the man responds no thanks, god will save me. The man dies. When he arrives in heaven the man says to God “Why didn’t you save me?” And god responds, what do you mean, I sent a helicopter, boat and car to save you and you turned them all away.
God sent me to find you and love you like you have never been loved. I was born to love you. I gave you my whole heart 10 years ago. I committed to be emotional and physically faithful to you and I have never broken that commitment nor will I in the future. I know I came late into your life but , I got stuck in traffic and I caught up to you as fast as I could. Just because your exes couldn't love you doesn’t mean you are unlovable or a bad person, it means they weren’t meant to love you. I was meant to love you!
I’m not trying to change who you are, I want you to see who you really are, not the lies you have told yourself over and over until you accepted them as fact. I will keep telling you the truth, that you are an amazing person until my words, the woman that loves you with every fiber of her being, becomes the tape in your head.
Love your wife
Before Raylan and Lisa, there was Raylan and ......
Raylan is 16 years my Senior. When he married his first wife, I was in Junior High- yikes! When he married his second, I was married to someone else-actually went to his wedding. Life doesn't always happen the way the fairy tales suggest. Sometimes you have to experience life so that when the person your suppose to love the rest of your life shows up, you know it. Stuck in a traffic jam, captures how it felt getting to this point for me. It wasn't that I didn't want to get here sooner, I just couldn't physically make it one minute before.
In the meantime, life happened; things were said, blame assessed, guilt sunk in and with it came emotional scars. Some have healed and others have faded, but they're still there at some level. I didn't think my loving Raylan would somehow magically make those wounds disappear. But, I've been surprised how the internalizing of the negatives from his past relationships have created a tape in his head that has been difficult to break. Me reminding him often that I love him and the occasional corny love email have slowly over time tore little pieces out of the tape. I GOT STUCK IN TRAFFIC, took out a rather large one!
Maybe you were stuck in your own traffic jam before you found your hubby and Life Happened. If so, tell the one you love, you love them often--it may just be what they need to break their own tapes in their heads!