What love looks like...

The amazing, adorable, cute little face that you see here is my baby sister. She is 7 years younger than me and absolutely one of my greatest joys in life. She inspires me daily with her absolute determination to be the best that she can be. She frustrates me constantly with her stubborness that she knows best about everything (wonder where she got that?). She literally can make me laugh until I cry with her dry sense of humor. She humbles me with the way that she loves and cares about me, and others. She makes me worry with the way I sometimes hear myself come out of her mouth. She is probably more like me than I am comfortable with, but at the same time, she has a magic and beauty that is all her own. I am probably way too protective of her, but I don't care. I love how she knows by the look on my face when a week has been too hard or there's a situation that I just can't let go of and she'll come and crawl in my lap like she did when she was three and just cuddle. I marvel at how we'll show up at the same family function coming from two different cities wearing the same earings. It slays me when her tender heart is broken because of how open and loving it is and yet I can't ask her to change that part of her. I think its awesome how she knows I steal almost all of her socks when I am home because I forget to pack my own and yet never complains to me. She worries me at how much the weight of other people's opinions sit with her because she is so uncertain of her own, but I know she will grow into her confidence. I am so proud of her ability to sit down at the piano or run on a soccer field and play her heart out at both equally. Of all the things about her that I love, the one thing that I probably value and treasure about our relationship the most is the fact that she consistently pushes and challenges me to be the absolute best person I can be because she is watching and learning and imitating. And because she knows me better than alsmost anyone in the world- with her, I have to be absolutely and achingly authentic and real and vunerable. Because that is what love is. Its being able to absolutely real and raw and true to who you really are with another person and allowing other people to be the same with you.