Love Notes

Valentine's Day comes at such a good time. I apologize to those born in January, but January in Utah -for a California girl- is the WORST month of the year. All the magic of white Christmas and holiday lights and cozy evenings totally wears off. It's just cold, cold, cold, the snow is dirty brown, and spring is too far away to start counting down. Especially when some old groundhog dictates how much more of this sub-freezing weather we have to endure. #Notmygroundhog

So it's refreshing to go grocery shopping and be surrounded by pink, hearts, love, chocolate, and happiness.

"Wait, Rycee, weren't you the POSTER child of anti-Valentine's in the February 2012 BYU Newspaper?" 

Hear me out.

Yes, I was. And you can read it here.

And I still believe Valentine's Day is a hallmark holiday and can create a lot of undue pressure on people to spend money on each other. But between February 2012 and February 2017 I learned a lot about love. Love is hardly the romantic jitters you have for your finance TA or the cute girl in your neighborhood you've been on three dates with.

Serving an LDS mission opened my capacity to love more than I previously had been able to in 21 years. I loved -so dearly- the pastor at the door yelling at me on his doorstep, telling me I was wrong and foolish and going to hell. I wept at his hatred for me, knowing he would never believe in families being together after this life and forever. I loved the little nine year-old girl who learned the song, "I Am a Child of God," and wanted us to sing it with her every time we visited, even though she couldn't be baptized yet. I loved the young women with whom I lived, shared meals, drove, and testified day after day. I loved personalities I never even considered befriending previously.

Then Scott and I grew from friendship to a love that my younger heart had only dreamed of. If I had known then that someone like Scott would come into my life and make me happier than happy, I would have been more patient. Our first two years of marriage were a dream. We went through so many trials together and truly developed a deep and abiding charity and appreciation for each other.

Scott is a different kind of romantic than I. More likely to express his love in chores and service, Scott rarely leaves love notes or posts cutesy things on Facebook declaring his adoration for me. And I don't expect him to. In fact, at my request, he has never brought home flowers. (Dead flowers depress me, even if they smell and look beautiful. Because they are dead.) So when I do find something like this, I know he truly means it:

Love for a spouse is not artificial. Your spouse becomes your family, and you get to know each other's idiosyncrasies and flaws and cheer each other on in life. Scott treats me with kindness and respect. I genuinely have become a better human by interacting with Scott every day the last 2.5 years. 

Then we had Hosanna. No, I did not love her at first. *GASP* I read this article (←click here!) which communicates perfectly how I felt as a new mom. In sum, doing my duty as a mother and taking care of my baby lit a fire, which slowly warmed up the empty space in my heart day by day. Now I adore and LOVE my little girl and she is my ray of sunshine. 

Here's my point about Valentine's Day.

I now believe that we need February and February 14th to celebrate love. In a current climate of hatred and misunderstanding, we need to revere each other. We honor the commandment to Love God at Christmas by remembering His Son. We heed the commandment to love our neighbor on Valentine's Day. This is why I started the #ShoutoutSaturday tradition on Facebook. I want to write love notes to share the untold story of the heroes and angels in my life. I hope to fill the news feed with more good and less arguing. 

So THANK YOU, world, for adopting this Hallmark holiday and giving us a chance to connect. A chance to write love notes. A chance to LOVE.

"Love is the Remedy for ailing families, ill communities, and sick nations. Love is a smile, a wave, a kind comment, and a compliment. Love is sacrifice, service, and selflessness."

(Message from Thomas S. Monson for February 2017)

Gaps

It's becoming more and more real to me how insufficiently we connect with friends, family, and acquaintances on social media. Facebook and other connectors are truly terrible at letting me know what's important in someone's life. It's disheartening enough for me to want to throw in the towel and give up, but then what would I have? Emails? Letters? *Gasp* meeting in person?! For an introvert, setting up friend dates is actually pretty stressful to me. I have to really like you and miss you or else my Wanna-curl-up-at-home-with-a-book-instead takes over.

Websites like Facebook and Instagram are really just gaps. Big, empty holes between two cute pictures of your baby and your Christmas tree.

What is really happening in between?

What amount of effort did they exert to get that perfect picture? What events occurred in that person's life between those two generic, happy posts? Most people choose not to share much on social media. There's especially an awkward stigmatism towards getting personal, or sharing bad news, or just plain news.

We all have that one friend who posts a play-by-play of every single thing he/she is doing at every minute of every day, and what his/her kids ate for every meal and when they last went to the bathroom. We shun them for being so embarrassingly public, for being "News Feed Whores." (I will further abbreviate as NFWs.) Their life is constantly streamed online for all to see.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, social media has created a culture where it's awkward to share personal, negative things that happen to us. We scroll down so fast that news about the weather is right next to a new baby or a tragic death in the family, and we have become desensitized. So if we share that we have the flu or break a leg (which could have been the most miserable few days/weeks we can remember), we might get a handful of "likes" if we spin the post in a positive way, maybe a few sympathetic comments. But most people won't bat an eye.

In fact, I suspect this blog post itself won't get that many hits unless I put a really alluring picture to go with it. Or make the title super click-bait or announce some huge news. So here's a picture I googled so 10 more of you will read this.

We are either inundated with way too much information from our NFWs that when something very important happens to them, we miss it,

OR

We just see pretty, smiling pictures of babies and families and yummy dinners but nothing about what is really going on in their life.

For example, how many of you know that I spent all day at the ER all day yesterday with my mother and baby and thought my world was literally ending? That I had a complete anxiety breakdown in the parking lot and Scott was helping me breathe through the phone while he was stuck at work?

Do you know one of your friends may have a severe auto-immune disease, or another one of your friends battles an eating disorder?

How much do you know about your friends' new babies other than how much they weigh and if they're sleeping through the night?

How much do you want to know?

When we log in to Instagram or Facebook, etc, what are we hoping to see? Pinterest-like pictures of smiling people that make us happy? Political rants that we can readily add our voice to? Or do we want to know what's truly going on in the lives of as many of our friends as possible?

How do we cure our ever-shortening attention-span to really reach people and connect? In our hunger for fast, vital information, is there a better way to use these social media outlets? Will we always demand well-edited pictures and 30 second video clips to speak to each other?

I get so excited to get a random message from an old friend I haven't talked to in years, and then I burst into tears when after we exchanged a few words I find out my "random" message was really just a pitch to get me to buy their makeup or their LuLaRoe.

I appreciate and admire the candor and vulnerability of many people on my news feed who precariously balance sharing their big ups and downs without being NFWs. How do you do it?

Maybe during this #LightTheWorld Christmas challenge we can reach out to a random person on Facebook (preferably not a former boyfriend/girlfriend) and really get to know what's going on in their gaps. Maybe meet up for fro-yo or lunch. Or would that be too awkward?

Consider this my open invitation to be more raw, more open, and more real on social media. If you don't want to share that much info with "strangers," then maybe you have too many Facebook friends. Maybe you could separate your friends list into "friends" and "acquaintances" and save the cute Pinterest-type posts just for the acquaintances. You can control exactly how much you share and who you share it with (do any of you already do this?).

Or maybe you can start a blog. I would love to read it.