What I Want Out of Life…and Love

 

I have been listening to this song a lot lately. I’m not a die hard Alicia Keys fan or anything. There are a few songs of hers I enjoy listening to, but for the most part, her type of music isn’t typically my thing. This song really gets me though. When I hear it, it humbles me. I could listen to it three times in a row and still want to hear it a fourth. The pretty piano notes combined with the lyrics mirror my heart .

Derek and I are doing the best we can for our family and making it just fine, but with little to spare to go toward what people consider the extras in life. We meet needs and pay bills and go grocery shopping. Sometimes we’ll take a trip to the zoo or grab a small bite out somewhere, but those trips are few and far between. I have been working very hard to advance in my career and have some hopeful prospects that are making themselves known (finally!).

In any case, my point is, despite a rough patch that has kept us from doing some of the things we’d like to do, we’ve still kept a nice home, had food on the table, clothes to wear and above all, we have two happy children. Two children who are surrounded by family, friends, trips to the park, fun in the back yard with bubbles, playing ball and swimming, outings to the Y indoor/outdoor pool, happy evening meals spent on the back patio, I could keep going… They don’t notice the difficult side of things we, as adults, have to deal with, and that makes me extremely happy.

Now I want to take time to break down the lyrics of this song (the parts that speak the loudest to me), and basically proclaim my love for my husband:

-“Some people think that the physical things define what’s within
And I’ve been there before, and that life’s a bore
So full of the superficial”

I don’t care if we don’t have a giant house and tons of material possessions. As long as I have you, I’m happy. It may be a stretch to say I’d be happy living in a cardboard box as long as I had you with me, but the truth is, although a cardboard box is not ideal and would be most certainly miserable, I’d rather be there with you than in a fancy house filled with comforts, alone. I mean that with all my heart.

 

-“Some people search for a fountain
That promises forever young
Some people need three dozen roses
And that’s the only way to prove you love them

Hand me the world on a silver platter
And what good would it be
With no one to share, with no one who truly cares for me”

Now, I do love receiving flowers (haha), but I am not the kind of girl that constantly needs to be reminded, through gifts, that I am loved. If we decided to never give each other gifts again, even though giving gifts is fun and makes you feel good to do it, it would never cause me to doubt a single thing about who we are and what we share in our hearts. That’s the only part that matters to me. That’s what we said in our marriage vows, “for better or worse, for richer, for poorer”. I meant those words with every drop of sugary and acidic love. There would be a void that could never be filled if there was no Derek to constantly tickle me even when it makes me mad, to drink coffee with in the morning, to enjoy fall with, to share the most childish (and sometimes very crude) jokes with, to have random nights where we stay up talking about everything together, to tell me the sweetest things possible when I lease expect it, this list could also keep going. I mean, really, what good would this life be, even if we literally had every single thing we wanted and a vast, never-ending fortune, if we didn’t have each other? (I hope to all the higher powers that you feel that way too).

So, it goes to say:

-“Some people want it all
But I don’t want nothing at all
If it ain’t you baby
If I ain’t got you baby
Some people want diamond rings
Some just want everything
But everything means nothing
If I ain’t got you”

 

I love you with every ounce of corniness, dorkiness, cheesiness, and lameness this post possesses…and I don’t care if everyone knows it. You are my everything.

❤