True love is alive

I went to my eldest son's home over the weekend to celebrate with him, his lovely fiancee and my grandson...and the many, many people that are their friends and extended family...their engagement.  They threw a super fun barbecue and the people streamed into their very small home and thankfully larger back yard...all to celebrate the love between these two excellent human beings.  

I love my son and his fiancee.  I love that you can feel the love and respect they have for each other and every one of the friends who came to celebrate.  I have talked about love and family before but this is different.  This is fascinating.  I have raised a human being who is respectful and generous, wonderful and kind.  I have actually raised three such humans...I have the truest of true love for them.  They are my heart.  

I have been, for the majority of my life, difficult to love and certainly difficult to like.  I have the most impermeable of walls built around me for most everyone.  My children, my grandchildren, my sisters and nieces, my selected family and friends...they all have easy access across the big wall.  Everyone else...not so much.

As my children have grown to adulthood and introduced their new families (their husband/wife/fiancee and the families that come with them) to my side of the wall, I have sadly not lowered my defenses as much as I should have.  Not as much as they would have liked.  I am a hard person.  Cold-hearted a bit.

I am careful.

I have allowed the wrong people on my side of the wall in the past...just lowered that wall and let them come in and pillage.  It took years to get over the damage...like a ravaged field after the locusts have feasted.  Every error in judgement has raised the wall higher still.  I don't like this about me but it has served me well.  

But, yesterday, as I watched these wonderful people celebrating my son and his fiancee, it occurred to me that perhaps my walls are high but I didn't teach my children to build them.  My excellent, loving, generous, intelligent children love much and are loved.  They respect and are respected.  They didn't go down the path of their hardened mother but rather used the love and respect they were raised with to build friendships and families of their own.  Friends and families who have, by and large, accepted this old, hard, cold soul for the person her children see.  

Wow.

True love is alive in the hearts and souls of people I had a hand in making...and in everyone who touches their lives.  

I think my cold heart has thawed quite a bit in the past few years.  Thanks to my children...and their children...and their friends and selected families.  My cold heart is warmer indeed.

Later...