I LOVE

Life is hard and often full of hurt. This seems like an obvious statement, especially to anyone who has lived on this planet for any significant length of time. But sometimes it is so incredibly easy to only see the difficulties and tragedies of life and to miss the beauty, or at least to shunt it to the side in the face of the daily bombardment of harsh realities. I recently finished the book Create Anyway: The Joy of Pursuing Creativity in the Margins of Motherhood by Ashlee Gadd. It’s a beautiful book about how we’re all creative, even if not in the traditional “I’m a painter” sense, and how important it is for us to participate in creativity even when it feels like the last thing we have time for. In the book, Ashlee has a short “poem,” if you want to call it that, she wrote called I Love. In it, she writes about all the things she loves. I found myself adoring this poem because it was all the things that brought her beauty and light and life. It wasn’t a moment to wallow in the challenges—although there is a time for that. It was a moment to celebrate all the things that make life beautiful. And it called to my thirsty soul, yearning to dwell on things I love but so rarely think about. I loved it so much I wanted to write my own version. In this season of love, I hope it inspires you to think about all the big and small things that make this life truly beautiful and to revel in the things you truly love. So here’s my version of the poem I Love, based on Ashlee Gadd’s poem by the same name from her book Create Anyway.

I love sleeping in. I love morning snuggles with my children. I love white puffy clouds suspended in a blue sky. I love a clean kitchen.

I love becoming so immersed in a good book that a part of me almost dies when the story ends. I love babies. I love the safety I feel wrapped in my husband’s arms. I love the art of cooking—of taking something as plain and even repulsive as an onion, some garlic, tomatoes, and basil and soaking it in olive oil over heat, doused in salt, and making something spectacular.

I love how every single snowflake, sunset, blade of grass, flower, and fingerprint are completely unique, all because of the endless creativity of our endless Creator.

I love collecting stamps in my passport. I love waking up before my family, taking a walk while the world sleeps, and writing my thoughts in the stillness of a world not yet awake.

I love making new traditions. I love crawling into bed at the end of a really productive day.

I love a good movie. I love my sisters—both biological and chosen. I love puppies. I love a good cup of hot chai tea. I love baked goods. I love getting dressed up and feeling deeply pretty. I love when I’m loved for just the way I am.

I love old friends. I love making new ones.

I love quiet. I love naps.

I love knowing my Savior’s heart both weeps with me and rejoices over me.

I love making memories. And then reliving them again and again over warm cups of tea or by hot fires.

I love finding God’s abundant blessings buried inside an ordinary life.

I love the way snow quiets the world, as sounds muffle and feels as though life actually slows down with the fall of each tiny flake.

I love the way tiny snowflakes turn into diamonds as they reflect the moonlight on a crisp winter’s night—and how I always think of my Grandpa when he’d tell me “we’re rich in the Lord.”

I love watching my children learn.

I love feeling the warmth of the sun, as though experiencing the embrace of light. I love watching plants grow. I love foreign languages. I love the planning of a trip to a new country almost as much as I love visiting . I love creating.

I love slippers. I love immersing my body underwater—feeling my body become weightless as though gravity can be cheated. I love a shower that steams an entire bathroom, frosting the mirror and dripping condensation down the walls. I love citrus-smelling goatsmilk soap from the tiny farm not far from our house.

I love the sound of my children’s laughter.

I love shoes. I love little handprints.

I love how my husband still finds me beautiful no matter what, even when I don’t.

I love how my husband and I are building a life together. I love the fresh smell of the air after it rains, like the world has just taken a shower and is newly clean. I love the sound of my children’s feet padding around upstairs.

I love flowers. I love when my children are kind, both towards others and themselves.

I love the panna cotta from that tiny restaurant in Venice. I love when someone speaks in a foreign language and I can actually understand them.

I love coming home. I love Harry Potter and Jane Eyre and J.R. Moehringer.

I love a slightly underbaked chocolate chip cookie. I love cold lemonade on a hot day and hot tea on a cold one. I love feeling safe.

I love when I can find the words to take a small or insignificant moment and turn it into something that feels extraordinary.

I love looking at old family photos. I love walking down memory lane. I love the way laughter feels, as though joy is a human dancing around the room.

I love baking. I love feeding my family. I love being a mother.

I love the magic of fireflies and the way they bring the heavens down to earth. I love the sound of rain on a thatched roof. I love watching a storm roll in. I love a feather pillow.

I love watching the golden embers of a once-raging fire glow like a shadow of the sun in the darkened wood.

I love feeling inspired.

I love eating fresh lychees under an endless blue sky while a butter-yellow sun beats down on my back. I love riding on the back of a motorcycle while my husband drives us in a giant loop around the Colosseum in Rome or to a hideaway hotel on a deserted beach in Madagascar. I love knowing there is always something more to learn.

I love how the act of rolling the windows down and blasting my favorite radio station while my hair whips around my head and I sing at the top of my lungs feels like freedom.

I love immersing myself in a good book so much it almost becomes a part of who I am.

I love walking through the sand in my bare feet, feeling the tiny grains slide between my toes while the waves wash away my footprints.

I love when I don’t care what others think about me.

I love a good ChapStick. I love rainbows in waterfalls.

I love laying in a dark field close to the seashore on a warm summer’s night and watching the stars dance through the night sky while shooting stars fly by and feeling the vastness of the space we’re surrounded by but so infrequently experience.

I love coming home from work early. I love when the sun rises late on an early winter’s morning and paints the mountains bright pink.

I love the golden amber color of my baby girl’s hair, which becomes a crown of blazing fire when she’s running in the sun. I love that my son has his father’s hazel eyes. I love how my middle daughter is so like my mother—the grandmother she’ll never meet.

I love autumn. I love Glacier National Park. I love traveling somewhere that’s not touristy, that’s not on others’ bucket lists, and finding it more magical than anything supposedly “must see”. I love the smell of onions and garlic roasting in hot oil.

I love how the trees change color in the fall—but not all at once, when the top is red and the middle is yellow and the base still covered in green—as though the tree itself is showing us that change happens gradually, even for trees–and how that inspires me to be kinder towards myself and others.

I love snowshoeing through the mountains after a big storm while the trees droop with snow and the world looks as though it’s a story land come to life.

I love building Legos with my son. I love a warm sweater. I love hugs. I love blazing new trails. I love being good at things. I love positivity. I love a summer thunderstorm. I love giant aquariums in small seaside towns. I love living big but feeling small.

I love cappuccinos made in tiny cafes on cobblestoned streets in ridiculously old cities in Europe. I love good memories. I love Jesus. I love the feel of a brand new sweatshirt. I love the sound of babies cooing. I love the look of elaborate, swirling calligraphy.

I love going to bed before the sun.

I love crawling into a freshly made bed with crisp, newly washed sheets. I love a full moon.