Love hard because we don’t get to love forever. We don’t get to forgive forever. And we certainly don’t get to dance slow forever. And by the way, dancing slow lasts a lot longer than dancing fast. In October, Scott and I went to a fabulous wedding where everyone was dancing fast. We survived on the dance floor for half a dance. I’m not kidding. “I’m too old for this,” I told Scott over the pounding music. “Me too,” he said there on the dance floor, and we wished the adorable bride and groom well there on the dance floor, and went home and went to bed with our hips and knees hurting.

At the end of December, on the brink of this new year, we went to another wedding. A beautiful winter wedding with white lights and hot toddies and candles everywhere, in the trees and everywhere, and there on the dance floor two tiny little grandparents married 64 years swayed beside the bride and groom. The DJ did this. He had all the happily married couples come out on the floor to dance with the bride and groom after their first twirl alone together.

“Only the happy couples,” the DJ stressed, “We don’t want any unhappy people out here” which surprised me since this DJ certainly wasn’t PC. I saw the look on a young, newly divorced woman’s face when he said this, and I wanted to walk over and hold her in my arms, which would have made the moment all the more politically incorrect and awkward, so I didn’t.

Instead, I said a prayer for that young woman and then I walked out onto the dance floor with my hubby and we danced slow. We dance this way best. Slow. And I marveled that nearly 27 years of marriage kept us out on that floor spinning slow and whispering happily to each other for quite awhile. Until most of the other couples were gone. Only the grandparents survived the DJ’s final cut, and when the grandparents were left alone with the bride and groom, the DJ asked the old folks the secret to their long-lasting union. “Do the work to stay in love,” ordered the feisty little grandma. “You don’t just stay in love! It takes hard work to stay in love!”

I wish I’d recorded the grandma’s statement to share here with you. She was bent and tiny and old and cute as an antique toaster and her voice was surprisingly hearty. I wanted to take her home with me. Take her to every wedding I’ve ever attended and ever will attend to have her order the bride and groom: “Do the hard work to stay in love!”

I learned in 2015 that everything worth having takes hard work. Farming certainly takes hard work. West Butte Orchards about wore us out last year. But I don’t want to talk about farming today. Forgiving is on my mind.

Forgiving takes hard work. It really does. It’s not like you come at forgiving saying, “Oh, I so want to forgive! I just can’t wait to forgive! Get out of my way, I must go and forgive my friend for hurting me! My ex for hurting me! My mother or father or brother or dog for hurting me!”

We’ve all been hurt in the process of loving. If you haven’t been hurt while loving I’m not sure you’re human. And we humans are all so eager to forgive, aren’t we?

The truth is many of us have trouble forgiving. But standing at Anna’s grave, a bright and beautiful young girl’s grave in 2015, I realized life’s too short not to do the hard work of forgiving. Really forgiving. Truly forgiving. Face to face forgiving.

A lot of us go around the mountain this way: “Oh, I’ve forgiven that person and that’s all I need to do. I never need to speak to that person again. Never need to look them in the eye and say, “I forgive you.” Or harder yet, look that person in the eye and ask for their forgiveness. Especially when your battered little heart pumps along repeating: they did it to me. They hurt me. I was just protecting myself in the relationship. I was just reacting to their crap. 

Reacting or not reacting, a grave will teach you to forgive. And not some easy, oh I forgive you and we go on with our happy little lives down our happy little roads of forgiving while gassing it a million miles apart forever and ever, amen.

A grave will teach you to do the hard work of forgiving face to face. To look that friend, ex, parent, dog, whoever in the eye and say, “I forgive you.” Or “please forgive me for the crap. Your crap. My crap. It’s all crap. And I don’t want to be buried with this crap so let’s just forgive and get over this mountain of pain together.”

Remember, it’s a climb. Mountains are meant for climbing. Do the hard work of forgiving as you climb.

So we’ve already talked about dancing slow, along with forgiving, so let’s get into loving hard.

When Anna died, I can’t explain it, but I was drenched in love. Drunk with love. Hugging everybody desperately drunk on love. I even hugged people I’ve never wanted to hug. I gave love and accepted love and not once did I think about the ground between us. Good ground. Bad ground. Blood-spattered ground. The ground of my relationships just didn’t matter when Anna died. You could have been my best friend or my worst enemy when Anna died, but I needed your love. And I needed to love you. Love carried me through that dark valley. Your hugs, your notes, your kindness carried our family through the absolute heartbreak of losing Anna.

Love carried us. The answer is love. It really is love.

At Anna’s funeral, I hugged a man I never would have touched had death not touched me. He was standing there looking bereft just outside the church door. I was stumbling along nearly blinded by tears when I saw him. All I can say is it was love– not my love or his love or any ounce of human love on this planet that propelled me over to him. Propelled me into his arms for a moment of hugging. I could have hugged a hundred people there at that church door, people I deeply and definitely love, but instead I hugged a man I’ve always done my best to avoid.

I know. Now you’re all wondering who this man is. Sorry, I’ll never tell. Because at Anna’s funeral, I realized this man was made in the image of God, and Jesus loves this man, died for this man, so I must love him, too.

Anna’s death in 2015 taught me how to really love. Love hard. Really hard.

I want to do more of these three things in 2016. Forgive fast. Dance slow. And love hard. I invite you to do this with me my friends because life is too short to just stare at our mountains and never climb them. Let’s conquer our mountains together in 2016.