Life Lessons I Learned From My Grandma: You Gotta Show Love
As humans, we are capable of many different emotions. We can be sad, we can be mad, we can feel envy, we can feel guilt, and most importantly, we can feel love. To me, the greatest of all of human emotions is the ability to show love. We learn how to express our emotions as children. How many of us have said, “I am a worrier. I am just like my mom,” or “When I get mad, you can see it all over my face. My dad was the same way”? We learn how to express our emotions at a very early age, and those lessons stay with us until the end of our lives. Our ability to show love and how we express it is the very same. As children we watch the people around us. We listen to them and we emulate them, whether we want to or not. The Bible says that we should have hope, faith, and love and then adds that the greatest of these is love. In 1st Corinthians, several versus are dedicated to the characteristics of love. There are millions of songs dedicated to love. There are entire movies that are centered on love, and there are entire books written about finding love. That is how important love is. Love truly does make the world go round.
You may be wondering why I have chosen to speak to you about love today. Of all days, why today? Well, I will tell you. Ninety-three years ago today, on October 12, 1925, my grandma, Ruth Cutsinger, was born. She lived on this earth for ninety years, and in that time, love was the message that she chose to speak of and teach. My grandma had no trouble showing love. She was never backwards about telling people that she loved them, even if she did not know them very well. When my grandma died on May 22, 2016, everyone who spoke of her told stories of how she showed love to them or someone that they knew. Love was always the answer to every problem that my grandma faced in life. It may have taken her a while to get around to that conclusion, but inevitably she would find her way back to the same conclusion, “You gotta show love.” If I heard her say that once, I probably heard her say that 12,000 times. In so many ways, it was her anthem, her theme song, her catch phrase, and now that she is gone her words continue to echo in my mind and in the minds of all who knew her. Even now, all of the people who loved her will very often say to each other, “You know, you gotta show love.” How proud my grandma would be to know that her words have outlived her. Her words have an immortality of sorts.
This is a picture of the billboard outside of a local radio station taken on May 22, 2018.
So in honor of my grandma’s birthday, I want to declare that this is a day dedicated to showing love. There are so many ways to show love, and I implore you to find a way to show love to someone today. It can be anyone. It can be a stranger, a friend, or a family member. Do something today to show love, and when you do it, think of my grandma. Just for today, when you say, “I love you” to someone think of Ruth Cutsinger. How great would that be if all of us could show love today and when we do, we think of her.
After my grandma passed away, my mom found these two pictures and placed them together. This picture was taken in the early 1990s on the screened porch of my grandparent’s lake house. We spent many hours sitting on the porch talking and laughing. My grandma always said she hoped Heaven would be just like that screened porch. When I think of my grandma, this is how I remember her, talking and laughing.
Love is what will change this world. Fighting and yelling and making accusations will not make the world a better place. Only love can do that. Never forget that the children are watching all of us, and they are learning how to express their emotions by observing how we express ours. I think if we all remember that a little more, we may stop ourselves from showing emotions that are not borne from love. Maybe we all should say to ourselves more often, “You know, you gotta show love.” Showing love and expressing love will bring peace to our lives and to the entire world, and PEACE MATTERS!
~Dan~
This is the an audio of the dedication that I did for my grandma on the 2nd anniversary of her trip to Heaven.