I learned a lesson on the meaning of love lately, from my four-year-old daughter, Sara Leah.
Sara Leah is an affectionate child, who adores her family and keenly senses just how much, as the 'baby' of the family, we all love her.
She's a friendly little girl, too. But like many children her age, she shies away from strangers or people whom she doesn't know well. There's almost an invisible barrier between her warm and spirited interaction with "hers"—her family, her siblings and parents, her teachers and playmates—and her stiffer, more withdrawn manner towards the rest of the world.
Sara Leah is particularly fond of her oldest sister, Esther. Though the two are more than seventeen years apart, the special bond between them is evident.
That is why I was curious to see how Sara Leah would react to her oldest sister's recent marriage, and as a result, the new member of our family, with whom her sister would be building her own home and life.
But on Esther's recent visit with her husband, Sara Leah demonstrated a strong message about how she defines love. She instantly warmed to her new brother-in-law, constantly approaching him to play, sing, chat, show her drawings and just laugh with, as if she had known him her entire life. She unmistakably regarded him within her clearly defined boundary of "hers".
Intuitively, she understood what many of us forget as we get older—that if you genuinely love someone, then you also love and accept whomever, and whatever, they love.
