Lupine & Gumnuts
Words have been my forever love. I love to write for a fistful of reasons; but the limitlessness of the written word has to be one of the most important to me.
In words, you can do anything. Go anywhere. Invent beyond the dreams of your wildest intentions. It's magic, it's freeing. It's important.
Language is an incredible tool, and how you define things even more so.
Luke and I do a lot of pre-martial counseling. It's a good thing that we are experts, considering our (almost) five whole years of tested marriage experience and endless wealth of knowledge and wisdom (kidding, obviously. Marriage is the weirdest and best and worst and most challenging, great, patchwork of relational craziness).
Unsurprisingly, the topic of love comes up a lot. All the time. Every session. What is your love story? What do you love about the other person? What are your love languages? We throw it around like used confetti. Congratulations! You’re in love.
We love one another, and we love (in my life, anyway) tater-tots and sushi and bagels and cream cheese.
As a word, we use love flippantly, and I think, we use it wrong.
Our official-premarital-counseling, but also forever definition of love goes something along the lines of this:
Love is sacrificial action for someone else's better good.
The epitome of which is, of course, the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He is the embodiment of humility and selflessness, He is love. And His love was sacrificial action.
And here’s the thing, I also know a thing or two about this kind of love. This kind of sacrifice.
Because I gave up just about everything to be with the man who is now my husband.
Two days after I graduated from university I packed up my entire 23 years of life and moved to the other side of the world (literally). I said goodbye to all my family and friends, unsure of when I would see them again. I threw away my kindergarten artwork, my childhood seashell collection, my High School textbooks and my pre-teen dog posters, and I packed up my everything into two suitcases, and a pack.
I flew away from everyone who knew me. Who saw me grow up. People who understand me, think like me. I sacrificed my culture, my way of spelling, and even my accent in the pursuit of sacrificial action for someone else's better good.
Love cost me. And it costs me everyday. As it should, as it’s a decision, an action, a choice.
Marrying somebody from the other side of the world sounds like a romantic love adventure, and it is. It's wild, it's exciting, it's crazy, it's a really great story. But it's also gut-wrenchingly difficult and lonely. It's expensive, and not only in dollars and cents (but that, too). It’s costly. Sacrificial. Difficult. And the best.
But still, I wouldn't trade it. Not for Luke.
I'm lucky enough to be married to the best man that I have ever met. And I was lucky enough to learn early the truth of love itself. That anything good isn't easy. That what's best is won by fighting for it, and laying aside yourself for something greater.
And here’s the proof that I’m a writer: all of that above was just an intro to my logo (ha).
When imagining what it would be for us, this site, for me and both of us, I wanted something that showed us how we are: entwined and together. Our sacrificial, international love.
And so, our logo is a bouquet of Alaskan and Australian natives. Lupine, forget-me-nots and fireweed. Blueberries, eucalyptus leaves, gum-nuts and a waratah.
It's represents us; from polar opposite ends of the earth, falling and staying in love all over it.
The Australian girl and the Alaska boy who met via miracles and make it work. We’re Luke and Bec. Lupine and Gumnuts.