Touchdown!

My husband has an amazing capacity to receive love.

He's a wide receiver.

No, literally, he's a wide receiver. As in, one of these:

Now, I had no idea what a wide receiver was before I got married to one. In fact, I attempted to understand American football many times and attended my fair share of Superbowl parties and STILL was clueless (you Europeans aren't the only ones!). 

But football is my husband's favorite sport, and with patience he unraveled this sport for me. Similar to chess, each player in football has his own position, and the strategy is a complicated feat of skill and psychology involving multiple coaches for each position. 

In football, the quarterback throws to the wide receiver. This fascinates me that ever since he was a boy, Ghanashyam has played wide receiver. You see, I experience my husband as loved. He's loved by family and friends and mentors and his patients and bosses...! If footballs were love, he'd be pelted with those brown pointy things on a daily basis. But more importantly than being loved, my husband receives love. He actually catches the ball of love and doesn't let it bounce off his heart. Then he goes for the touchdown.  

The thing is, he doesn't just catch any ol' ball hurtling down the field. There's strategy. Discussion. Boundaries. Rules. Intuition. Love is about cooperation and then being open and ready to receive with a trusting heart. 

I've seen Ghanashyam play football. He is focused. Present. Mostly, though, he's grinning. Even when he misses a pass, he smiles and tries again. And again. 

What I'm coming to realize is that if life was a giant football game, we would ALL be surrounded by brown pointy balls flying our way all day, every day. We would be throwing balls, hoping others would catch our love. And hopefully, we would be receiving the love that our heart desires, opening our hands to catch that love and go for the touchdown. 

By cooperation with one another to give and receive love, ultimately we experience the touchdown of God's love.