"If you're going to love someone or something, then don't be a slow leaking faucet—be a hurricane." — Shannon L. Adler I am proud to say today is my parent's 30th wedding anniversary. From high school sweethearts to five kids later, those two lovebirds are doing alright. This is a little story about our celebration of them five years ago. To celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary, my sister and I wanted to do something big. In theory, this was going to be awesome. When it came to practicality, I quickly realized that it was going to be a little bit harder. Katie did not have this same realization.
Katie and I are the oldest of the McCune siblings, and with this, we took on the responsibility of planning, as well as assumed a large portion of the financial burden, to figure out some way to celebrate my parents. Now, at this time, I was 18 and Katie was 21, and we were both in college. So, another way to phrase that is we were both broke. The younger three would not be in much of a position to help us financially either, so we started brainstorming. Katie’s first idea was to get our mom, who loves taking pictures, a nice, quality camera. The ones we were looking at were about 800 bucks. We had a couple months to save, and while I felt my palms getting sweaty at the thought of the five of us trying to save the money (while still eating) we pushed on. Katie, however, wasn’t done. Along with my mom’s new camera, she thought that we could get my dad a Mac. That would bring our new total to $2000, with a couple months to save, and five broke kids. Katie was not realizing the huge, glaring negative sign in this math equation when it came to looking at the money we had in relation to her extravagant plans. At this point I was thinking, Okay, I currently have enough money to get mom and dad a card that is not from the dollar section and a stamp. Did the financial impossibility stop Katie? No, it didn’t. Also, let me remind you again, that Katie, the eldest, soon to be college grad, was the one who was blissfully unaware of our financial ineptitude and the plans that she was making. Like I said, Katie still wasn’t done. In addition to the new camera and Mac, Katie also wanted to send my parents away for the weekend so they could enjoy some time to themselves. At this point, I was done adding up the money that this would take, and instead started saving to try and make a trip home to surprise them. I had abandoned Katie’s plan, but do you think she was done? I would love to say that she was. I really would. Katie was just so absolutely blinded by giving my parents a huge celebration for their anniversary. Quick sidebar: Katie still thinks that it is four days later than it actually is every year. She lets my parents celebrate on their anniversary, and then four days later doles out her congratulations. Back to her plans of well-intended ridiculousness… When my parents were enjoying their weekend away on our dime, Katie wanted to have our basement finished. Ty Pennington style. She was set on contacting our uncles, family friends, contractors, and finishing the basement in the few short days that my parents were gone. Again, on our dime... which was about all we had at the time. At this point, I had to shatter a few dreams and tell her that I didn’t think in the next couple months we were going to be able to scrape together the thousands of dollars that was needed for the party that she had envisioned. She used to swear that she was never serious about any of it. I am here to tell you that that is a load of crap. Now, she will just tell you that she was dreaming big. While my parents did not get showered with gifts, vacations, and home remodeling, we did however surprise them with all five kids being home, all of our family and close friends, and we hired one of their favorite local artists to come and play live music for the night. It wasn’t what Katie had planned, but it was something that my parents enjoyed which is all we wanted. Not having to take out a loan to make it happen was an added bonus. Like I said, Katie now says that she was dreaming big for our parents. Growing up with Katie, I have experienced this multiple times, but Katie is undoubtedly a dreamer. They are not always so out of reach, but Katie will do what she can and dream as big as her mind will allow for those that she loves. I think this story is a good testament of Katie dreaming big for those she loves. She will also go the distance for the people that she cares about. While, in this instance, she was planning to run a marathon and giving herself only forty-five minutes to do so, she will typically go the distance. Dreaming big, especially in regards to others, also brings out the idea of loving someone like a hurricane. Love should be big, bold, and sweep you off your feet. In Love Does, Bob Goff talks about the idea of loving someone differently than the conventional way we are told to do so. He said that, “[John] didn’t love people the way that Hallmark says to love people; he loved them linebacker style, in a full contact way.” We need more love linebacker style. Too often love is just thoughts or words, but the problem is that’s not how it should be. Love should do things, and make people change, grow, act, live, and do more. Love should never be stagnant. Love should never remain in the brain, because what good is love that is bottled up? We need to give love in a full contact way, with the strength of a hurricane, with big dreams in our hearts and in our heads. And remember, love is a do thing. As in a verb. Action is required. This world could use a lot more lovin' nowadays. Congratulations on 30 years, Keith and Kar. We love ya, and maybe one day we can remodel the basement.
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AuthorJust a twenty-something attempting to create the illusion that I have a clue what's going on... Archives
May 2017
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