Candle of Love

By Kathy Lynn

 

The little girl climbed up on her daddy’s knee and looked at him

 with her bright green eyes.

 He put his paper down and smiled at her.

  “What do I owe this honor for?” He asked.

 

The little girl smiled back and tilted her head and said,

”Daddy, how did you know you wanted to marry mommy?”

 How did you know that she was the one for you?”

 

 

He reached over and on the table was a beautiful blue candle

 in a very pretty blue dish.

 He reached in the drawer and brought out a lighter.

  With the lighter, he lit the candle and it glowed and showed off

 all the colors of the pretty dish it was setting in.

 

“Now,” He said, “I will try and explain how

 I fell in love with your mommy.

  You see that candle that I lit on the table?

  Well, that is what I will use to tell you about

 how you begin to know that you really love someone.

  Do you notice the different colors

 in the flame of that candle?” He said.

 

The little girl nodded her head and said .”Yes daddy,

 it has many different colors in the flame,

 but what does that have to do with love?”

 

“Well, when I first met your mommy we were

 just teenagers in school and passed each other

 in the halls everyday. I would smile at her and say hi

 and she would smile back and say hi to me.

  Now you see that yellow outer light coming from the candle?

 Well, that is the beginning of love.

 For after a while I would see your mommy

 and I started to talk to her . Oh , nothing important,

 just silly things teenagers say to each other,

 but we started to get to know each other better and

 soon we became friends.  That was the beginning

 of my feelings for your mommy.

 Every day I would wait by her locker just to see he

 and talk to her before class started.

 Then we started walking to classes together

 and I carried her books for her.

  We laughed and talked and finally

 I got enough nerve up to ask her if she would go

 out to the movies with me on Friday night.

 She accepted and it was a great date.

 We enjoyed each others company

 and had a wonderful time. 

 

“Now sweetheart, do you see that slightly

 darker yellow color, almost like a light orange?”

 

Again, the little girl nodded her head

 as she looked at the candle with

 the dancing flame that was sitting on the table.

 

“Well, we started to date more often

 and we talked all about our dreams

 and what we wanted out of life.

 It seemed that your mommy and I had a lot of

 the same dreams and plans for the future

  As we dated more and saw each

 other more we became closer and close,

 just like that yellow/orange color in the

 candle is closer to the top of the candle.”

 

 and said,”Daddy

, what about that middle light on the candle?

 What does that mean?”

 

Her daddy smiled and squeezed her tightly

 in his arms and kissed her on the forehead.

 “Well, now, that flame is a deep red color

 and it is the brightest color of the candle.

This is the color of deep love. Mommy and I dated

 for a long time and we talked and

 planned and really got to know each other and as we did,

 we found out that our feelings

 for each other had gotten deeper and deeper

. We both knew that we wanted to spend the

rest of our lives together when we were finished

 with school . We still had many years of

high school both of us wanted to go

 to college and get our degrees. 

 

All through college, we wrote to each other

and on the holidays when we came home

 we always were together.  We grew to love

 each other more and more as the years went

flying by and when we graduated,

 I asked your mommy to marry me and she said yes.”

 

“That is why the color of the middle

 of the flame on the candle is such a deep red color,

 because mommy and I loved each other

 that deeply and wanted to spend

the rest of our lives together.”

 

The little girl smiled and told her daddy

 that he was very special

 to pick mommy for his wife.

 

 Daddy just laughed and kissed her on the forehead

 again and squeezed her tighter

 and said that the story wasn’t finished yet.

 

“You see honey, after we got married

 and we both worked for a few years,

we bought this house and moved into it

 but it seemed like something was missing.

 We had so much love for one another

 that we decided that we wanted to

 share this love with someone else.

 Can you guess who that was?”  He said.

 

“Yes, the little girl squealed, I can! I can!

 You and mommy

 decided that you wanted to have me, didn’t you?”

 

As he gathered his little girl

 into his arms he kissed her

gently on her cheeks and said

 very quietly, “Yes, sweetheart,

 mommy and I decided that we wanted

 an angel to come and live with us

 and be our little girl, and

 God sent you to us to love.”