This Saturday February 28, 2009 marks the kick-off of the “Sister Buddy” group program that my women’s organization iask, Inc. will launch nationwide.

One of the activities that we are going to engage in as a national group of sisters & brothers is to read the best-selling book by Dr. Gary Chapman titled, “Love As a Way of Life: Seven Keys to Transforming Every Aspect of your Life”. As you all know I started this blog because I wanted to build it around a theme of “LOVE”. Not just romantic love, but L-O-V-E as a universal way of being.

I am on a quest to be a better, happier, more peaceful me. God knows I spent too many years of my life living for everyone else, dancing to the expectations of others, carrying burdens that were not mine to bear, and chasing goals and career ambitions that only left me feeling empty inside. I found that when I am at my best in life is when I LOVE or am in LOVE. By that I don’t just mean the romantic/eros kind of love. I am talking about the LOVE I feel for my nieces, or the LOVE I had for my puppy dog Nelson before he died abruptly last year at the age of three (3), or the LOVE I have when I am with my sisters, or fellowshipping with the body of Christ, or withy my oldest and dearest friends.

My desire is to become the kind of person who has a heart like God and a soul that longs to connect with people, serve them, and love them unconditionally. I truly get gratification from serving God and from serving others.

But let’s be honest L-O-V-E is hard, and it is the most misused word in the english language in my opinion, we throw it around like it means very little. We are so easily in and out of love aren’t we? People use people, and dispose of them like Dixie-Cups. We promise to love our friends, our families, and yet somehow we find it to be a daily struggle to find the love and fulfillment we seek much less what we are able to give to others. That is sad because love is everything, it is at the very core of how we were formed by God, and it is the very center of our being.

We spend our very first moments out of our mother’s womb craving touch and love. We spend the rest of our lives thereafter longing for that same connection and a sense of belonging within our families, and from the people that we eventually draw into our lives.

My goal by the end of 2009 and for the rest of my life is to learn to make LOVE a way of life. And to draw to myself people who want the same. I think you start this process by learning how to not devalue the important things in life, by learning how to appreciate and nurture the people that you say you love by honoring their unique “love language”, and most importantly I want to learn to walk in love and peace with others just as Christ, Mother Theresa, and Ghandi did no matter what opposition, offense, or wrongdoing was thrown at them or in their direction.

I agree with Dr. Chapman’s premise in the book that people who walk in LOVE as a way of life in all they do are happy people. They are not tossed to and fro by the winds of life and the inevitable challenges that life brings our way. I want to be there. Won’t you join me and the membership of iask, Inc. this Saturday as we undertake a much needed journey to L-O-V-E.

Please check out the iask sister blog at http://www.iasksisterblog.com