Choosing a name.

For weeks I've been trying to come up with a name for my blog.  I asked people for input after sharing where I wanted to go, they were no help (thanks ladies, I love you anyway).  Finally it hit me yesterday With lots of Tender Love and Care, it is part of me, it is what made me who I am.  How might you ask?  I shall explain. 

Many, many years ago a man took in my dad and raised him as his own.  At the time my dad was a very troubled teenager.  This man, my grandpa, Carl Tew, changed my dad's future the day he took him in.  Fast forward a couple years.  My dad had joined a traveling carnival, during one stop he met and fell in love with a 16 year old girl and married her (my mom of course :) ).  There they were 16 and 18 married and a baby on the way and needing a place to live.  They moved to New Orleans to live with my grandpa.  His family loved them as though they were blood.  They were treated as well as their own children and grandchildren.  Fast forward a few more years.  My grandpa moved to Florida and bought two pieces of property and put a house on each one.  My parents lived in one, his sister and brother-in-law (Joyce and Bob Crandall) lived in the other and he lived in a travel trailer parked on the lot.  Someone started calling them the TLC compound (Tew, Losinger, Crandall, but it also stood for Tender Love and Care).  So for years they signed Christmas cards the TLC compound and were known as such.  Fast forward many more years...I got married adding the name Walters into the mix.  So we threw it at the beginning, With Tender Love and Care.  Fast forward a couple more years, Missy married and now we have Lovell's.  So for now the name is With Lots of Tender Love and Care.  Items from our family are signed WLTLC now.  The T from our name is now gone but he remains in our hearts forever, without him, there might not still be a L or would have ever been a W and another L.  He is part of who we are.  I don't know how it will change over the years as more of my siblings get married but until then it remains WLTLC. 

Many people look at our family and think it is strange.  My aunt and uncle (Bob and Joyce) have now moved in with my parents since it is handicap accessible.  Casey and I returned home and live next door to my parents in one of the original houses here.  Missy and Jacob only live about 10 minutes away.  We do everything together.  Shopping days, birthdays, football games, everything.  We love being together.  Thankfully the son-in-laws fit right in and love it too.  (Note to any future in-laws, take one, you get us all :) )  Some people are envious of our relationships and closeness and wish they had even some of it with their own families.  All these people in my life have helped shape me into the person I have become.  Without them I would probably be someone very different.

As for With Lots of Tender Love and Care, it is something I strive for.  I have not arrived.  I have bad days like everyone else.  I'm grumpy some days and not much fun to be around.  I however long to be one that shows love and compassion at all times.  I love 1 Corinthians 13:1-7 where it talks about love. 

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
 If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.
 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

 

I want to love with that kind of love.  I want people to look at me and see God's love in me.