It is New Year's Day. I should be writing resolutions but I have been mulling over the power of a two-year old all week yet haven't gotten around to writing. I spent Christmas in Maine with my family. While I stayed at my parents' house, it meant lots of time with my niece and nephew. Lillian is lovely, a master of charming smiles already, but she doesn't talk yet - and still her mom is the one she needs/wants most.

My nephew Daniel on the other hand is a master of language and pretty much runs Nana, Papa, my two brothers and me! I don't do silly. I have, in fact, organized my life, my profession around facilitating so that I don't have to actually do the silly stuff. As those of you who know me well have heard tell, I even picked Wheaton as a college partially because you couldn't dance...and I don't dance. To me, it's always been the picture of being willfully out of control. And that is just an inconceivable choice to me.

And yet, Daniel tells me to "Dance!" and I dance. And I am quite certain I look ridiculous. The funnier part of the story is that I am in fact dancing to the ring of my parents' phone. This past summer I did a bit of a jig for him - including a heel kick and all - to the song of the phone. And somehow he hasn't forgotten.

Such is the power of a two-year old. He doesn't care if I know what I want to be when I grow up or whether I have it all together or even if I look silly. He in fact loves me just because. And even crazier, I love him just because. I would dance or play silly games or look the fool or do pretty much anything for him - and for Lillian - because I love them.

Love is a funny thing to me. It is complicated and dysfunctional and life-giving all at once. My extended family decided to get together at Pizza Hut on Christmas Eve. Now I don't do Pizza Hut. I'm a bit of a food snob. I don't even make brownies from a box unless they are Ghiradelli:-) And I definitely don't eat Pizza Hut pizza! But I went to Pizza Hut...in the parking lot of the mall...because for better or worse I love my family.

The things we do for love, for love of family, for the love of friends, for the love of a two year who can get me to dance to ringtones...it is a mysterious, beautiful, humbling thing...