This Is What Love Sounds Like
A Belated Mother's Day Reflection
It didn’t always sound like big speeches or grand gestures.
Sometimes, love just sounded like the slow, familiar creak of an old rocking chair.
My mom spent a lot of her life in one. Crippled with severe rheumatoid arthritis from a young adult age, she bore more pain in a day than most people could fathom. But she kept moving. She kept loving. She kept showing up.
Her courage wasn’t loud. It didn’t announce itself. It was steady—the kind of steady that rocks through pain and prays through uncertainty. The kind of steady that hums hymns in the quiet.
(If you listened closely, you might catch a few lines of her favorite: “There’s been grace for every mile… there’s been grace for every trial…”)
Love sounded like that, too.
It sounded like her warming up a hot lunch and bringing it to my tiny school, back before we had a cafeteria. It sounded like her folding laundry or washing dishes or helping my brother with homework in the evenings.
It wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t showy.
It was real.
And now, years later, when the house gets still and I catch the faint sound of a floorboard creaking or a hymn playing in my head, I remember:
Love isn’t always flashy.
It’s faithful.
It’s the steady rhythm of someone who keeps choosing to show up.
And the older I get, the more convinced I am:
Those quiet sounds leave the loudest echoes.
Who are the quiet heroes in your life? I'd love to hear about them below!