If you know Lane, you know
one thing is true: You can't get this guy to shut up. (Not really.) Seriously,
though, it's quite common, especially when it comes to talking about matters of
the heart, for us to be less verbose than our female counterparts.
Listen, for instance, to how
Lane describes the beginning of his relationship with Shana: "We met at
the hospital when I was on the ambulance transporting patients. We went on
several dates and decided to make it official." Yea, that's how it went...
Nope.
Just listen to Shana
describe the exact same thing, and I am actually leaving some of this out:
"I had NEVER been someone that got "googly eyed" over a good
lookin' man before; HOWEVER, let me just tell you that the first time I saw
him, another nurse and I had to stop giving shift change report to stare at
this most handsome man... We never really talked to each other when he came
around. Just some smiles and 'Hey how's it goin?' My coworkers had enough of this
unspoken flirting going on. While I wasn't around, they asked Lane what he
thought about me and if he ever planned on asking me out. They gave him my
number, and he contacted me a couple days later." Wow! Where Lane's
description reads like a corporate press release, Shana's description could be
taken out of a John Le Carre novel!
Around the time I was
writing this, I was listening to Cory Booker read his audiobook, and he
introduced me to a term that describes what Shana's friends did behind her
back, a "conspiracy of love". In a world awash with imagined
conspiracies, not many of them positive, a "conspiracy of love" is a
beautiful thing.
This is not the first
"conspiracy" to be "perpetrated" on this couple. Both of
them describe what wonderful, loving, caring and close families they grew up
in. This is the original meaning of Booker's "conspiracy of love".
And, this "conspiracy" went further. After all, you don't join the
most intimate of the helping professions, nursing, if your parents have not raised
you to deeply care, not just for your family and friends, but for others in
need. This same approach is what caused Lane to join his dad in a regular rather
novel Sunday morning activity, feeding the homeless.
Having been raised this way,
today is special and meaningful, because it marks the formalizing of the
creation of their new family, where they can continue this "conspiracy of
love." As Shana says, "I have never been 'that girl' that dreams of
the big wedding day, with the big dress... What I have dreamed of is FAMILY. I
desire to be married so we can try to start a family that is as close and
wonderful as the families we were raised in. I want to marry because I have
been blessed with a man that also values the importance and closeness of family."
Shana further underlines the
significance and context of today in their lives, "The actual wedding day
will be wonderful, but what I desire most is to start living the day after the
wedding." What does she mean by "living"? I suspect that one
simple sentence from Lane explains this: "She has the biggest heart I've
ever seen in someone." That big heart means that Shana and Lane's
"conspiracy of love" only starts with their family, but spreads far
beyond it, to their friends, their patients and beyond. We and the rest of the
world are and will be better for it.
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