Throwback Thursday: Love in Action

Today is my husband, Joey, and my 4th wedding anniversary! We started dating when I was 16. At the time I was asked to give a talk about Love in Action. It still amazes me that the young man I was dating when I wrote this is now my husband! 


Enjoy!

Love. Action. Two of the most common and simple words. They’re easy to pronounce, and easy to use. But when you stop and think about it, Love. What is love? Is it a feeling you can experience in one moment, and then an instant later, that same feeling just fades away again. Love is a choice. You choose to love a person. You choose to give unconditionally to a person without needing something in return. Action. When you put something into action, it starts to move, puts something in motion. Actions are constantly happening, in everything you do, or don’t do. When you put love into action, you truly are able to give completely of yourself for the sole benefit of someone else.

Christian love is not in search of that high you get off of someone, or the excitement of “falling in love.” Love doesn’t just come to you, you have to work at it. You have to choose to love. You have to choose to give. You choose to sacrifice. Christ loves us so much. He gives of himself so that we would have someone to turn to. He tries to be our friend. Just as we should love people who don’t like us, he loves us even when we ignore him. When we don’t want to love him back. When we turn around and refuse to answer to him. We love Christ when we love each other. When we are able to give of ourselves, Christ sees that, and sees you giving yourself to him. Even just with a smile or having lunch with someone and spending time talking and listening. So if this is true, then one of the most evident ways to see and feel Christ’s love and Christian love, is to look into ourselves and see how we choose to love, or even not love, every other person. You can also look around and see how other people give of themselves to show you Christian love and Christ’s love in each of our own lives.

A few months after my boyfriend, Joey, and I started dating, a side of my family, a part of me, showed, that I was hoping would have waited a little longer. It’s not that I was ashamed of my family; it was that people often get scared of what goes on. There are eight of us kids in the family, me being the oldest, so there are ten of us in my house. Four out of my five brothers are in wheelchairs. Even after 16 years, the doctors still don’t have a name for what my brothers have. As of now, there is not a condition that is already known that matches with the blood and tissue tests that have been done. They find that it has something to do with a muscular degenerative disorder, meaning that as the years go by they are able to gain muscle, but once they lose the muscle that they have gained, they can’t get it back. So, when they get sick and lose a skill, it is very hard, nearly impossible, for them to get it back. The three oldest, Michael, Christopher, and Daniel all are fed through a tube that leads directly to their stomach called a G-tube because their throat muscles are weakening and they have trouble swallowing. They can make sounds and somewhat communicate, but unless you know them well, it’s really hard to. Michael, who is 16 and the oldest of the boys, can still sit in his wheelchair, but often he is tired or sick, so we have a bed in our living room that he can lay down in and still be with the family. Christopher, who is 14, is probably the strongest of the three older boys. He can still eat some types of food and he can drink soft drinks and water in small sips. He has a strong upper body so he is able to sit fairly easy in his wheelchair. Daniel, who is 12, is probably the worst off of the kids. Along with everything else, he always has to be lying down and has a trach in his throat to help him breathe. This helps so that if he has a problem, they can have easier access to his lungs. We have another bed in our living room next to Michael’s that he is always in when he is at home. His wheelchair is also specially made so that he can lay down when we go places. After Daniel there is Josh and Elizabeth who don’t have any physical disabilities, similar to me. After them comes Simon who is almost 5. He is in a wheelchair that he just recently got earlier this month. He crawls around the house and can walk in his walker. His sidekick is the youngest, Gianna, who just turned one and will probably end up being a lot like me. She’s just learning to walk, but ever since she has started to hold on to things and pull herself to start walking, Simon has started trying to pull himself up to stand, but hasn’t been able to stand by himself yet. So, as you can probably picture, there often are wheelchairs and medical supplies and tables and toys for the younger kids all over the place. And on top of that, the sounds of all the machines and alarms that the boys have are going on and off constantly.

This is what I have grown up with, this is what my cousins and little brother and sisters have grown up with, so we are used to it. Many of the guys I know would have been gone after they met my family, much less stay and actually learn how to take care of them. Joey never made me feel like I wasn’t good enough or that my family was too different. He embraced me and my family as we are. He makes my brothers and sisters feel like they are the most important thing to him. He makes sure, on his own, to go and talk to the kids, and play games and laugh with them, just like he would if they were able to walk and talk. He doesn’t care what they look like or whether or not they can play football with him. He plays ball with Christopher, makes jokes and plays “nurse” to make Michael and Daniel laugh at his craziness. He does anything and everything he can think of to communicate and sometimes he just sits and hangs out with them.

When I see him interacting with the boys, it gives me encouragement to continue to do everything that I do. He makes me realize that I have a choice about how much I help, and his actions remind me of what a special relationship I have with each one of my siblings.

Realistically though, we often fail at loving each other and people we don’t like. But when we fail, it means that we need to love ourselves enough to forgive and let ourselves move on and not dwell on it. There have been times where I’ve failed to love my family. There are times, when instead of going and helping my parents with my brothers, I just try to avoid being seen, or just say “I am too busy.” After I do this, I feel bad. I start to think, what if they think that I don’t care about them or love them anymore. But then there are the times when I go to the hospital to pick up their medications and drive the medications home before I can go and do other things. I know that it’s the right thing to do, but it’s hard because it often means changing plans, or making an extra detour when I would rather just go home. But, as hard as it is to drive that extra place, I know it’s better because that means that my brothers will hopefully get better and I will be able to spend more time with them. And of course, the bonus is that smile I get when I get home and go up to Michael or Daniel and say, “Look what I got guys, your medications.” And then stick out my hand for a payment, and they just laugh at me with thankful eyes.

A few years back, when the three older boys got g-tubes to be fed through their stomachs, I didn’t want to eat either. I had the attitude that, if they couldn’t taste the food, well then I didn’t need to eat either. I didn’t want anything to do with food or eating. I would eat little food and that was really bad for my health. During this time, I failed to love my brothers because I was unable to accept them as they now would be. And since I couldn’t change it, I needed to be more like them, and sacrificed my health because I felt bad for them. I also failed to love myself. I failed to look at what I needed to do to make sure that I was healthy. I wanted their disability too because, to me it felt like being healthy was too painful. I didn’t want to be healthy; I wanted to go through what they went through. If I would have really loved them and myself, then I would have been able to see them as they are, be grateful that they were still in my life and also be able to take care of myself so that I could be there for them.

When you really love someone, it takes so much work and so much effort. It takes time and sacrifice. You think for the benefit of the other person. You live to make sure that the other person has everything that you can give them. To truly love someone is probably one of the hardest things we could ever give, yet we receive the most rewarding feelings that we could have ever received.

There’s been many times that I couldn’t hang out with my friends or do something I wanted to do on a day off because my parents planned for me to be home to watch the younger kids while they went to meetings or doctors appointments for the boys.

One example is that last week, my mother told me that I couldn’t do anything the Monday morning that we had off because of a doctors appointment. I figured that I would just have to stay home and watch the younger kids like normal. What I didn’t realize is that this doctor’s appointment for the boys meant that I would have to do something at the doctors too. After 16 years of trying to find someone willing to work on my family’s case, and after going to doctor after doctor, we found one doctor eager to work with us and take our case on. A doctor from UCLA came down to my house to take blood from everyone in my family. All ten of us. They wanted to do research on my family to see if there is a difference in the DNA and analyzing the DNA to see if that could open up any more doors or ideas to find out what is wrong and how we can help my brothers. Now overnight I too became a “research project.” Normally, I have to be strong for my brothers. This time I had to be strong for everyone. Of course, we won’t get the results any time soon. We might never get a result. But it’s that kind of sacrifice of time and self that we put into trying to help my brothers that shows love in action.

But the love doesn’t only have negatives. In my family, since we used to have three, now four, wheelchairs, it’s hard to get around. When it would normally take 5mins for a family to get in the car, it takes mine 30. When Joey and I first started dating, he couldn’t understand Simon that well at all. He started to ask him a question and if the answer was yes he told Simon to raise his hand. When I saw the connection between the two, it was overwhelming. Now we all just say, “Simon raise your hand if..” Other times, when we’re at Sea World watching one of the shows or going through one of the exhibits, the sheer look of joy and happiness on Christopher’s face makes me realize that just to see him that happy is worth everything I’ve gone through. When I see Daniel doing better medically, it gives me hope and excitement for what he will be able to do in the future. Experiences like these show me that what you sacrifice will be given back to you a thousand fold.

When you participate in what other people care about and you show sincere interest, you are showing your love and respect for that person. It’s a simple act of compassion and care towards others. The result could be gaining a new friend, or gaining someone you can trust, but even if it seems like there’s no result, there is a part of you that will always remember what you gave.

My brothers, even when they die, whether it is sooner or later, will always be there for me. They will always be the people who showed me how to love, how to be happy, how to trust. I am given the best reward I could ever hope for. I am given sincere love, sincere trust. Even if they can’t tell me in words thank you or I love you, a simple smile or kiss on the cheek from them tells me that they’ll always love me. No matter what happens or what I become. They’ll always love me.

*Notes: Since I wrote this back in 2007, my parents had a 9th child (my youngest sister) in 2008, My brother, Michael passed away in October 2009, Joe and I got married in Nov 2009, Joe and I have two wonderful children, a son in 2011 and a daughter in 2013, and my brother, Daniel, passed away in April 2013. God Bless!