My Cup Runneth Over

Last night, I had the BEST experience. It wasn't anything most people would find riveting, but I went to this stake Relief Society training meeting. I know! Snooze, right? Well, generally speaking, yes, they are, but this one was different. I don't know what it was. I just left the meeting on fire and excited to launch back into Relief Society stuff. I honestly couldn't stop smiling. With the exception of the last couple of weeks (and the last three posts or so), I typically consider myself a happy person, but I really can't tell you how long it's been since I felt that good. My face literally hurt from smiling so much. Even though I was desperately exhausted (still recovering from Zoey's generous cold), I was so energetic and effervescent that I had to go over to some friends' house to share my news. I think they thought I was crazy. But it's the kind of crazy I'll take any day.
Here's what I'm reminded of (you see, I can't say that I learned it, exactly, because it's something I knew in my head, but my heart had forgotten): the love you give out is really what sustains you and makes you feel good. Sure, everyone wants to receive love, and believe me, I get a lot. I can't tell you how absolutely moved I've been by my friends and family's goodness and concern and loyalty and prayers and generosity (a special shout out to my van-time girls for the world's greatest Halloween package!). I am positively grateful and overwhelmed by the love people willingly give to me. I don't know another girl who has it better than I do in that regard. But again, what brings that purest joy is GIVING love. When I left that meeting last night, I was overcome by the love I have for my Relief Society sisters. I felt this magnificent concern not only for them, but for all the people in my life I've been blessed to know. It was a true answer to prayers. That's another thing I've learned. If you are doubting God is listening to you, pray to bless another person's life. I guarantee you'll get an immediate answer. My prayers of late have been to be blessed with other people to focus on rather than my personal heartache. They have been answered a hundred fold. I'm exhausted, but I'm happy. Again, I'll take it.
So here's what I was thinking-- I might liken this principle of love to filling an ice-cube tray. You can try to fill the spaces individually, but you just get a better result when you over-fill one and it spills into the other. Love is like that. The more you love one person or thing, the greater your capacity to fill all the others. And in my life, I've got this one little compartment that is stubbornly empty and unfillable at the moment. I don't know if it has a leak, or if it's deeper than the other compartments, or if someone else keeps sucking all the water out as fast as I can pour it in. But it doesn't matter. Because it the long-run, my life is 11/12 full of love, and sooner or later that last part of the tray will fill up as well. In the mean time, all the rest of the love sustains me and gives me what Emma Magenta calls "A gorgeous sense of hope."
That's not to say that I'm 100% better, nor that I don't still ache for Ray. I do. I still wake up with a pit in my stomach hoping that he's happy (though word on the street is that he perhaps isn't-- whether that has anything to do with me is neither here nor there). I think that's why I still can't eat normally and that my stomach is on the edge of revolt at all times. But I'm trying to shift the love I have for him into another compartment or two. Perhaps he's best suited for the category of admiration I have for men in my life I've loved platonically like Andrew or Nathan. There was certainly a strong element of that in our relationship. Or maybe I should shift some of that love over to the "part of my history I'd never change" where I keep special love for my childhood ideal, Shawn Parker, or the fax-love Grant and I felt, or the way I loved Reuben for taking me under his wing in college and never treating me like a mere convenience. I still can't move him completely from the maddeningly empty part of the tray, but maybe he'll get a little company after I go on my two dates this weekend with some other fellows. However it turns out, it'll be ok. I'm filling and refilling the rest of the tray. And I think that someday, when someone makes me feel that same kind of complete love and happiness like I felt last night for all the other great loves of my life, then I'll know it's right and I can move on.