What is Love? [Guest Post]

Posted on January 27, 2014February 4, 2015 by Matt Todd

I met Liz a little more than a year ago when she accused me of cheating with my chocolates. Me. Little ol’ sweet, innocent me. A cheater? Impossible. I still argue that I just looked so pathetic that the kind lady couldn’t help but notice that I needed help boxing those chocolates, but I guess I can see her point. You could say that I might have had an unfair advantage. But since all of us got to take some chocolate home, I think we were all winners that evening. So I’m pretty sure we’re past that controversy.

I really appreciate the thoughts Liz (@eternallizdom) shares on her blog, Eternal Lizdom. So I was excited when she agreed to write a guest post in response to my question, “What’s the most romantic thing someone has done for you?” I’m sure she’d love to hear what you have to say about her thoughtful response to this question. Feel free to either leave her a comment on this post or contact her via email at gentlemomlc [at]gmail[dot]com. Thank you, Liz, for writing such a great response!

What about you? If you’d like to tell about something romantic someone has done for you, I’d love to share your story! Shoot me an email and we’ll get the ball rolling.

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What is the most romantic thing someone has done for you?

That’s a hard question to answer. While my mushy side sometimes wishes for grand gestures of demonstrative love like flowers and chocolates and fancy date nights and serenades, I have to say that I haven’t had a lot of that Hollywood type romance in my everyday real life. My husband’s proposal didn’t have a production crew and will never go viral on YouTube. No one leaves rose petals on the steps and we never light candles because we seem to always lose our matches.

I do remember a boyfriend when I was in high school that I accused of not having a fun and spontaneous side when he scoffed at our double date friends and I for dancing around in a public park wading pool at 10 p.m. When I challenged him and told him that if he really loved me he would jump in with us, he not only jumped in but laid down in the water. I have to admit to being pretty impressed.

But that relationship didn’t go anywhere. That love wasn’t really Love.

I’ve been married to my husband, Jeff, for 10 years now. I think we’re a pretty standard family. We live in the suburbs. We have 2 kids. We both work full time. We’re involved in our church. We pay our bills on time. We go to doctor and dentist appointments and meetings with teachers and play dates and kid events and activities. We try to schedule time for a date night when we can but that only seems to happen once every few months. We support each other in our individual interests (for me, it’s going out to dinner with friends and for him, it’s participating in Star Trek Attack Wing tournaments). We watch TV and sometimes have a movie night and we both like to read. We eat out more than we should and we’re both terrible about cleaning the house.

And I think all of that is about as romantic as it gets. For me, all of that adds up to something that is the most important thing and that’s choosing love every single day.

I believe that love is an action word.

When my husband clears the snow from my car, that’s love.

When I remind him to take his medicine, that’s love.

When he does the dishes or takes out the trash, that’s love.

When I cook dinner, that’s love.

When we have a disagreement and snip at each other and then we kiss and make up, that’s love.

There are few things better in my life than holding his hand or feeling his arms around me. We laugh together, sometimes at strangely inappropriate times. We find each other attractive – the “spark” is certainly not lacking. I know that he is plugged in to our family, he is committed to me and to our kids and to our marriage.

So it might not be something I can show off or something flashy or something that will go down in any books of romantic history. The most romantic thing someone has done for me? It’s my husband choosing to love me and making love an action each and every day.

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Matt Todd

Howdy. I'm Matt. My wife, Christy, and I have four kids and two dogs, I'm passionate about orphan care. I'm a die-hard fan of the Evansville Aces, the Indiana Hoosiers, and Star Wars. I'm trying to live life by the Todd family motto: "It behooves us to live!"