"I Love You Most"

We were standing outside the airport saying goodbye.

Everyone was unloading bags, checking for phones and backpacks, making sure nothing had been left behind.

I was holding my three-year-old granddaughter when it was finally time to hand her back.

Throughout our time together, we had developed a little ritual.

“I love you,” she would say.

“I love you more,” I would answer.

And sometimes, she would grin and come back with, “I love you most.”

I set her down, and she walked toward her parents.

I felt that familiar ache of goodbye as I watched them rush ahead toward the entrance.

Then, from several feet away, she turned around and called out,

“I love you most, Cece.”

For a moment, everything stopped.

The cars.

The luggage.

The rush of the airport.

There are sentences you hear and sentences you somehow know, the moment they are spoken, you will carry for the rest of your life.

This was one of those.

And it has me thinking about the moments we collect.

A child laughing.

Eggs cooking in a crowded kitchen.

A sunrise that makes you stop.

The feeling that somehow, despite everything, the road keeps rising up to meet you.

“I love you most, Cece.”

What if part of being fully alive is learning to collect these heavenly moments?

Not because life is always beautiful.

Not because remembering them makes the difficult parts disappear.

But because what we remember begins to organize us.

We can become so practiced at remembering what hurt.

What went wrong.

What we wish had been different.

Our biology is very good at helping us keep track of those things.

But there are other moments worth keeping close.

Moments of love.

Beauty.

Belonging.

Grace.

And perhaps when we intentionally notice them, stay with them, and return to them, they become more than memories.

They become pathways Home.

A Creator Mode Principle

What we remember begins to organize us. What we return to becomes part of the ground we stand on.

A Question to Carry

What moments of love and beauty are you collecting?

What I’m Practicing

Collecting the moments I want to remember.

Letting myself stay with them a little longer.

Giving them somewhere to land.

A child's laughter.

A beautiful sky.

A meal shared around a crowded table.

A sentence called across an airport sidewalk.

Perhaps we don't return to moments of love to escape life.

We return because they remind us what has always been true.