My heart is tender towards you.  You are valuable and important to me.  I grieve when I think of the ways I have disappointed you or wounded your spirit.  Because I care so much, I hate seeing the door close between us.  I wish you could see I am trying, have been trying…to listen, to hear. 

To love you takes no effort.  No special sun in the sky.  No lavish gifts or flowery words.  No perfection on your part, no jumping through hoops, or backflips. 

As long as I am living.  Love you, I will.

Sometimes, as Shakespeare said, “the course of true love never did run smooth.”  (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and every loving relationship (marriage, kids, friends, spiritual family) gets challenged.  But like DC Talk sang to us so many years ago, “Love is a verb.”  And it is worth the risk, the pain, the possibility of both the good times and the bad to love, to do love and to guard love, once you have love.  Because real love is so rare.  Sometimes we are just too quick to throw in the towel with some one we love.  But because I need all the love I can get, I want to learn to give it, too, unabashedly, lavishly and eternally.  To give that kind of love ~ admirable, worth it.  To receive it, beyond words!…