Love Briquettes Loaded Up

"For from the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks." (Luke 6:45)

Jesus tells us what it looks like when we listen to His words and follow His law in today's Gospel. He tells us what it looks like to be living out a life of love.

It wasn't even two weeks after my third child was born that I found myself, soft belly high in the bathtub circa midnight, lapping in the waves of my salt tears and the salt soaked water. This child had rocked my world and my recovery was worse than anything I'd experienced. After a good hard sob, the kind where your echo is inside and out of your throat, I toweled dry, shuffled back to bed, and stabbed at my husband's calf with my toes. "I'm sorry," I mumbled.

Nothing like postpartum hormones and a bad infection to wring a heartful of unhappiness out of your mouth. My heart was dark and heavy and mean. And the words that lashed out of it said so. He forgave and forgot faster than he could pass back out, and it was me who stayed awake, mulling over how hurts heal slower for the hurting person who inflicts them.

Most of my days, my heart is full of love or decisions to love, and most of my days my tone and words speak that truth. But on days when I don't want to do the extra work of loading up love briquettes into my heart, it's ugly. It's me, plain and sour, and speaking the ugly out from in my heart.

If you have a coworker who makes you want to load up on love briquettes instead of the sour ones, spend an extra minute or two with them. If you have a friend whose texts make you load up on the sour ones, set ye ole phone away from you for a while throughout the day. If your classwork is piling so high already and the semester just started, steal away for a moment with Our Lord to get the good love flowing again.

I want to share love. I want to share His love today.

I know Our Lord wants to help me turn that sour dour into love. Ask Him to help you, too, today. Jesus meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto Thine.

He tells us what it looks like to be living out a life of love. // @WholeParentingClick to tweet

Nell O'Leary is a recovering lawyer who blogs and sews while tending to her husband and four kiddos in the great city of Saint Paul, Minnesota. She serves as Managing Editor for Blessed is She and can down a iced chai tea latte in no time flat. Find out more about her here.