What Love Really Is: Lessons from a Target Store

I rallied with the Valentine's Day preparations late Friday afternoon and headed to Target with all 3 of my kids so they could pick out Valentines for their classmates.

Imagine my delight to discover brand new carts at the Target! Oh, they were amazing in all their pristine plasticness, a new design without any metal at all!

My older 2 kids were grubby from all day at school plus an hour of playing in the backyard, the youngest still with the chlorine in his hair from swim lessons and the snotty nose he's been sporting every day for what feels like eternity but in reality is about 5 days! My 5 year old daughter is sitting in the baby seat of the cart. She's too big, but somehow fits her long legs in there. And me? I don't argue because the days of pushing my baby girl around in the cart really are numbered (assuming she won't squeeze her 13 year old self in there someday!)!

To add to the spectacleness of the kindergartner in the baby seat of the cart, she insists on taking off her slip-on shoes, so her bare feet are there dangling nearly to the ground, her 3 year old brother (the one who just wiped his nose on his shirt) is sitting behind her in the back part of the cart.

The 7 year old is looking at cards with me, grabbing them off the shelf faster than I can. "Here, this says 'For my husband,' on it; how about this one for Daddy?"

There are several other shoppers at the Valentine card display along with us, only they are more serious in their card selecting. They are determined to find the perfect card for their special someone and seemingly frustrated as each card fails to adequately capture how they feel.

I stoop down to peruse some cards at the bottom of the display

The 7 year old opens one and the song "Wild Thing" starts playing.

I cannot squelch my laughter.

And, there, crouching on the floor in the Target, I glance up at my motley crew of kids and think, "This is it. The life I never would have guessed I'd love! And it really doesn't matter which card I choose for my husband, because our love that has been through some real, messy, joyful, chaotic, blessed life and still says, 'I'm not going anywhere; we're in this together' is better than anything a card could say!"