behind the blog: our because

I spent the earlier part of my life following my heart into love. This resulted in a number of bad decisions, more broken hearts than I care to total up, and a lack of love for myself and the world around me.

But one summer day the tragic loss of a life changed mine.

I am, by trade, a nurse; a profession that taught me that the absence of a heart beat means death. The heart is what keeps us alive so it makes sense that the heart is also what keeps love alive. One day while I was eating lunch in the dining facility watching television a Fox News report of an IED explosion in Iraq covered the screen. I knew what would be waiting for me in the ICU. When I showed up to work I met my patient, one of the soldiers who had been injured in the blast. He had just undergone a battery of tests; he was pronounced brain dead. I remember wiping his face and cleaning the rocks out of his hair in hope that when his wife arrived to say goodbye, to the man she vowed to love forever; she would be able to recognize him. Beyond the ventilator, the tubes, and wires I wanted her to see her husband. I was there at his side when the doctor explained to his wife that he was brain dead, which meant he was no longer alive. She cried, the doctor cried, and I cried. At this point the doctor explained that machines were keeping him alive; he said that although he still had a heartbeat, without the brain, he was no longer with us. I realized then that if the brain was that important to sustaining life, then it must be just as important to sustaining love.

It didn’t happen overnight, in fact it took almost a decade, but I started to really focus in on the “because” of the people, things, and situations I loved. It seemed that those love feelings that I trusted my heart to provide me didn’t last nearly as long as the facts and the memories that my brain played over and over for me. I have never stopped loving from my heart; I just started using fact to back it up and to prove to me that those feelings were real and pure.

So what is “love because?” It is my way of sharing the mindset that continues to transform and improve the quality of my life. It has allowed me to fall more deeply in love with my husband, take motherly love to new heights, and find a renewed passion for my job. It is a way to proactively love your life by making yourself aware of why you love the things you do. Read on my friends and I promise you too will realize that,

“Life’s greatest loves are in the because”