As I headed toward the door, fear filled my dad’s eyes. “Please be careful,” he said. “I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you.”
I laughed softly and reassured him. “I’ll be right back. The grocery store is just down the street.”
Years later, I still think about that moment.
By then, I had become my dad’s primary caregiver. Aside from my husband, there was truly no one else meeting his daily needs. What I heard that day wasn’t control or simply worry. It was love expressing itself through the fear of losing someone precious.
Love has a way of showing up in unexpected places.
When we first moved my dad into a place near us, we bought him a beautiful leather recliner. His eyes lit up like a five-year-old on Christmas morning.
“Is that for me?” he blurted out, pure delight spilling over. That day, love looked like joy. I still have that chair. It has become a quiet, tangible reminder of a gentle old man who loved deeply—and was deeply loved.
Scripture tells us, “Love is patient, love is kind…” (1 Corinthians 13:4–7). Yet love is so much more than those familiar words. It isn’t one-dimensional. Sometimes it trembles with fear. Sometimes it bursts with laughter. Sometimes it sits quietly in a worn leather chair, holding memories of someone we miss.
Each year on Valentine's Day, love surrounds us everywhere—on candy hearts and Valentine cards, in jewelry store windows and Hallmark movies that end with a kiss.
But some of the deepest expressions of love aren’t found in any store.
Sometimes love is found among the red roses resting quietly at our local Lone Pine Cemetery, marking lives remembered and relationships that death could not erase.
There is something about a cemetery that reminds us how deeply we can love—and how deeply we can hurt when someone we love is no longer here. Yet even in the ache of loss, love leaves something behind.
A memory. A legacy. A chair. A story. A thousand little reminders that someone mattered.
And perhaps that is why the words of Andrew Ripp’s song Love’s Got a Way resonate so deeply. His music reflects his own journey of faith, and in this song he reminds us that love can bring healing to a hurting heart, create beauty from ashes, and break chains one after another. Love has a way.
And ultimately, that way begins with God.
From the very beginning, His heart has been to draw broken people back to Himself—patiently, tenderly, faithfully. His love meets us in our joy and in our fear, in our celebrations and in our sorrow. It reaches into the places where we hurt and reminds us we are still held.
As Scripture tells us: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God.” (1 John 4:7)
My dad’s fear that day was love. The joy in his eyes was love. The roses at the cemetery are love. And the healing God brings to our broken places is love, too.
Love doesn’t always look the way we expect. But when God is at the center of it, love has a way—of healing what hurts, restoring what has been broken, carrying us through what we cannot carry alone, and reminding us that we are never truly alone.
Where might God be inviting you to recognize His love today—and where might He be asking you to let His love flow through you to someone else?
