I could not stop thinking about the challenge I had just read on Facebook: "Tell me a sentence that changed your life for the better."
A sentence that changed my life. I have so many. I actually collect them, print them out and display them. Words with meaning — to me.
But none answer that question. Not as well as the simple sentence I heard so many years ago when I was in high school, a teenager doubting myself on so many levels.
The words came from a young woman. We attended the same high school and we were a couple. I cannot tell you the time or the place or even the season of the year ... but I can tell you how I felt when I heard that simple sentence we both were thinking but not saying out loud.
Then she said it: "I love you." A declaration from someone other than family. To a teenage boy hearing it for the first time from a teenage girl.
Those words can be overused. But at the right moment from the right person, they illuminate the world. I did not fully comprehend how someone like her could really love me. Even now I can hear those inner doubts of "Really? Me? Can that be possible?"
After hearing those words with sincerity for the first time and feeling the depth of those words for the first time, I learned for the first time that yes, it can be possible.
"I love you." A sentence that changed my life. More than once. And it still does.
I’m Lonny Cain … and that’s my Perspective.
