My friends often joke with me and ask me how I know “everyone." Most of tthe time, when my friends and I go out, I end up running into someone I know. Short trips to the grocery store, looking for one item, often turn into much longer then that because I’m catching up with someone in the produce ale. I’ve never been able to “swing by” a party, because there are just too many people I want to talk to. One of the life’s greatest joys to me is sharing it with other people. Sharing struggles, and joys, ups and downs, the good and the bad. When you share life together, you learn a lot about how people love one another.
My grandmother greets everyone with a kiss on the cheek. My aunts, uncles and cousins, my best friends, her best friends, and anyone she meets for the first time. That’s the kind of love for other people I want to obtain. It’s not enough to hug these people, no my grandmother wants to kiss them too. She really wants the people she loves to know she cares about them, all with in the first two minutes of meeting them.
I babysit for the Hollstrom family - in fact, I babysat them for all of high school until I left for college. Now, when I come home, I still watch their kids sometimes. But really this family has become my friends. I love the way the Hollstrom’s love other people. They love people by opening up their home to everyone. For all my years of high school, during the summer time and sometimes during the school year, YoungLife small group was held in the Hollstrom’s basement. Their four precious children would bring us all snacks and drinks, and when YoungLife was over, the Hollstrom’s let us hang around for as long as we wanted. It wasn’t just YoungLife the Hollstrom’s opened up their home for. It was the basketball banquet, the back to school parties, the out of school parties, baby showers, birthday parties…...and the list goes on and on. Any event the needed a place to be held, the Hollstrom’s opened up their home to it. That’s not just love for close friends, or family. That’s extravagant love.
I hope to live an amazing life. And one day, when that life is over, I don’t want people to talk about the adventures I went on, or the clothes I wore. I want people to talk about how I loved. I hope people say I loved whole-heartedly, and I loved with grace. I hope people say I loved extravagantly.