Where are you loved the best?

I have taken to telling my boys that "I am where you are loved the best." It is a saying from "Where the Wild Things Are."  It is interesting because their responses are varied.  Sometimes they will challenge me and say God is where they are loved the best and then I have to say, "On this earth, I am where you are loved the best."  I have been saying this because I have seen their souls becoming more wounded each day by what the world throws at them.  People say hurtful things, they are forced to conform to the world's ideas about who they are and should be.  I am reminded how my own mother and father were the place I was loved the best.  And really even still they are my rocks in the rivers of life.

I am that non-conformist river.  Man wants to tame the rivers and so we study them and build dams and try to control the uncontrollable.  I have sometimes in life built my own dams but over the last three years I have been trying to break down those dams.  I built those dams because the world wanted me to do so.  Conform to this rule, look this way, do these things; in the world it is a never-ending deluge of shoulds.  I should look different as a Mom according to the world but here I am as me and I know my boys are secure and well-taken care of and most of all protected.  We don't have all the things the rest of the world has and says we "need".  We have some things but what we do have is love.

I love to go and jump on the trampoline with my boys and send them high in the sky.  I love the feeling in my throat when they shoot me so high I lose my breath.  I am that Mom.  I am the Mom that reads to my kids.  I teach them to dance.  We hike and bike and play basketball.  I say sorry when I have been overly harsh.  I defend them at school when they are being victimized by a system that wants to make them into work-a-holic robots. I cry in front of them when they hurt my feelings and make them wrestle with how to make it up to Mom.  I send them messages that go on and on about how great they are.  I feed them with love everyday.  I hope that when they leave me they have been well-fed enough that it will sustain them throughout their lives.  But most of all I hope they remember that I am where they are loved the best.  I hope they will return to me when they need to be loved the best and fed. My two strong-willed children and their strong-willed Mom will always be okay in this world that tries to rub our edginess off because we are loved by each other and because those of us that are strong-willed do not let the world tell us where we should be loved the best.  We know that place because we listen to our hearts.

So where are you loved the best?  Where do you get the food of love?