time is love

With our due month quickly approaching, and my energy levels slowly dwindling, it has really forced me to slow down and really think about how much our life is about to change again, so soon and so beautifully.  The truth is, I feel amazing.  There is something extremely special about sharing such a miraculous time with a little girl who is really starting to understand that there is a baby in mama's belly.  My belly gets hugged and kissed and rubbed and kicked...not on purpose, but goodness, these bellies can sure withstand some toddler abuse I've come to know!  I know a big part of it is already knowing how amazing it is to be a parent, and questioning how our hearts could possibly expand enough to love another little human being as much as we love our first little Love.  But you know, that's what makes our heart the strongest muscle in our body.

If you ever wonder what we do throughout our days, well I shall tell you that it's quite simple, we spend time together.  Our pastor mentioned this on his sermon last week that time is love, and that really stuck with me and I have been meditating on it all week.  Some days, guilt tries to creep in telling me that I'm not doing a good enough job buying Ari Love the best toys, or that she is missing out for not having her own room, and maybe that our home isn't big enough or nice enough, or that when I'm too tired to do much we spend too much time watching sesame street.  But you know what, nothing compares to the way she sleeps between her daddy and I with one hand on my belly and one foot on her daddy, softly singing as we all drift off to sleep.  I wouldn't trade waking up to the scent of her delicious head under my nose, or her waking me up by playing with my eyelashes and proudly exclaiming "hi mama!"  One of the most comforting and biggest lessons that I have learned from our church and from living this minimalistic lifestyle is that God just wants to spend time with us..and so do our children.  

Many days, we don't even leave our little nook, but we dress up anyway and pretend that we are princesses.  I let her play with my wedding ring that her wonderful daddy gifted to me and I tell her the stories in detail of how we met and fell in love.  We play with recycled boxes and highlighters and write all over each other then take a 2 hour bath before our afternoon nap.  Actually, bath time at all hours of the day has been our go to activity here lately and Ari loves it.  We pretend that we are mermaids at the spa haha We spend time paying deep attention to the smallest of details of the roses that her daddy surprised us with and stare in awe at each perfectly formed petal.  Some days we sit on the ground and eat hummus and guacamole while singing the abc's and then take another bath.  I don't know any of the shows that people are watching these days because we don't have television, but I will tell you that I have laughed and cried more while watching sesame street than I ever have watching television, especially the episode with Jason Mraz singing, that one is our very favorite.  I really hope that she will grow up knowing how much she has taught me about the most important things in life, and I will do my best in teaching her what little things that I have learned along the way.

I say I love you too much

*I am very humbled and honored to have the Huffington Post publish this piece, you can find it here.  Please spread the love by sharing this post or anything that speaks to your heart with your friends and family as my purpose is to spread love any way that I know how*

When my family moved back to the United States when I was about 8 years old, one of the biggest culture shocks to me was how much Americans said the phrase “I love you.”  It came when parents dropped their kids off to school, or as the concluding phrase to a phone conversation, or just because, during a casual shopping trip to the mall.  In my traditional and somewhat conservative Arabic family, you didn’t really say “I love you.”  Honestly, it was hard enough wishing my parents or brothers a happy birthday, let alone actually telling them that I loved them.  I remember one day after spending the afternoon with a friend whose mother always told her she loved her for no apparent reason at all, I asked my father why he never said that to me.  His reaction of course was one that I had already anticipated.  He said that he didn’t need to tell me that he loves me because he shows me love every single day by having food in the refrigerator to keep me full, giving me money to buy things that I need, and making sure that I received a proper education, among many other things.  He also added that if he said it to me all the time, it would lose meaning and value.

I agree that there was certainly no shortage of all of the ways that love was shown to me throughout my childhood and adolescence.  My father gave up everything to bring us to America to give us an opportunity for a better life, and if that’s not an ultimate act of love then I don’t know what is.  But why was there always that longing, tugging at my heart strings…

I spent those years of my adolescence locked in my room, angry and hopeful, reading about what love looked like, and felt like.  Love felt cold sometimes, like when I kept my teddy bears close to me to make sure they stayed warm.  It felt like my heart swimming in my chest when Anne finally professed and reciprocated her love to Gilbert on Anne of Green Gables.  It looked like a puppet, as if there was a string somewhere under Mr. Rochester’s left rib, tying him tightly to little plain Jane Eyre. I’ll never forget my best friend from college, whose parents still held hands under the table as we ate our supper at our favorite Mexican restaurant.  This couldn’t just be something that you read about, right?  Most people told me that I would live my life greatly disappointed, and for a long time, I was.

When I saw him, the gates to Heaven opened.  I saw, heard, tasted, smelled, and felt love all at the very same time.  Our serendipitous encounter that summer day was and still is an incredibly spiritual experience for the both of us, and one that has had the greatest impact on our faith.  In that instant, my entire life flashed before my eyes.  If I sit here and write out to you all the details of that day, those months, these years, you might not believe me because I truly know that it is not of this earthly realm.  But please believe me when I tell you that life is much too short not to tell the people that you love the most, “I love you.”  I tell him every day, every night, and every time I think it.  I tell him in public, and in private.  When I rub his ears and push his hair out of his eyes, and when he holds my hand under the dinner table.  I tell him when he’s having a good day, or when I’m having a difficult day.  I told him over and over when those pink lines on the pregnancy test read positive.  Love is in our daughter’s name and even simply saying her name when she wakes up from a nap makes my heart flutter. When he lays on the floor with her speaking baby language, I tell them both how much I love them, and adore them.  Goodness she looks so much like him, I constantly find myself staring at them with tears in my eyes, living this and experiencing this is so much more extraordinary than reading about it in a book can ever be, but everything to hope for.  We are not perfect, and if we have ever felt frustrated at one another, nothing is more powerful than “I’m sorry, I love you.”  As much as we love taking risks, we hold true to never going to bed angry because the possibility of never waking up is much too great of a risk to take.  Forgiveness and love, these are the things that make up the core of our entire existence.  God Himself not only showed us that He loves us, but also tells us multiple times.  He tells us that He loves us.  Those words have never ever lost value to me, no matter how many times I say them, because I mean them with all of my being and everything that I am.  So while some may think that I say I love you too much, I say that you can never say it enough.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.   
1 Corinthians 13:13

*This post is also featured on The Love More Shop, committed to spreading love and giving back to parents in a simple way*

celebrating a revolution

It has taken me such a long time to find the right words to write this post and I am not really sure why.  Perhaps it's because I am in denial of the fact that the Earth has already done more than an entire revolution around the sun since the birth of the child that made my love and I parents.  Perhaps it's also because we now have a toddler...a very curious, beautiful, intelligent, and extremely active one year old.  She has always been all of those things, but finding time to write now that she can run around and get literally into anything and everything is a bit more tricky...but there is also so much beauty in it.  I don't want to miss a single thing.  Sometimes I am so overwhelmed with creativity and the desire to sit and jot my thoughts down or edit photographs for just a few minutes...

So much happens in "just a few minutes" in toddler time.  Like when she stands in front of the mirror when she thinks no one is watching and bats her eyelashes sweetly then smiles so big at herself...she gets that from her daddy :P  Or when I'm done dressing her and putting her hair in little pig tails and she takes a moment to hug and kiss me for taking time to get her ready as well.  Yesterday, while in the process of writing some of this post, she woke up from her nap and when I laid with her in our bed, she hugged me so tight and fell right back asleep in my arms.  I played with her long, dark eyelashes and let that beautiful moment really sink in.  For a whole two minutes on Sunday, our precious Ariella Love said "I love you" over and over again, to her daddy and then to me.  It was loud and clear and I could have never imagined a more perfect two minutes in my life to witness.  If you would like proof, I uploaded a video of that precious moment on my Instagram (@city_of_hearts).  I promise you, she said it. 

I would go through another 20 hours of natural labor every single day for the rest of my life.  I am so thankful that I wrote down our birth story (you can find it here) because I have miraculously forgotten much of it.  I sometimes go back and read it just to remember what it was like, but then I come to a very humbling realization.  "Our" birth story was as much for me as it was for her.  If I am going to be really honest with myself, it was much more for me.  I needed to feel strong and empowered, this has always been my nature.  I thought it would help set the tone for my entry into the beautiful world of motherhood, and it has and I am so grateful.  In the grand scheme of things though, it's not really about me at all.  This little girl, in her short life on Earth has done more birthing than I ever will in my entire life.

Happy birthday sweet Ari Love.  Thank you for making my love your daddy.  I've always loved him, but when I see him playing and giggling with you, I love him more now than I ever thought possible.  Thank you for making me your mama and helping me realize that I am strong enough.  You have shined Jesus' light since you were conceived and He works through you every day to show me things that I have been so blind to before.

Your grandparents flew all the way from Texas just to be at your birthday party.  Every single person that we invited came with a huge smile on their face just to celebrate your special day.  I know you won't remember but my favorite part was when we all sang you happy birthday and you realized that all of this was for you.  You smiled and clapped so joyfully for yourself, and your daddy and I cried.

So while your mama has a 20 hour birth story, you precious girl have a whole life's worth of life changing birth stories, day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute.  I promise I won't let any of them to go unnoticed. 

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.  Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.  (Psalm 139:13-16)