What I’m Celebrating this Valentine’s Day
Last year this time, Clif and I were frolicking around Charleston, SC together, just the two of us! After a delicious breakfast we would drive out to see the lighthouses and the beach. In the afternoon we walked down the old streets and looked in the shops. I think I got my hair cut at a nice salon. And we enjoyed dinner at Hanks, a high end sea food restaurant. All the while our two little darlings were being loved on and cared for back home! We didn't have a care in the world that weekend. And we really enjoyed each other! Love and romance is fun to celebrate and good enjoy!
This Valentine’s Day we find ourselves in a bit of a different situation. Since last year we endured another very difficult pregnancy. Continued to have heartache from extended family. Delivered our sweet bundle and found she has a heart that will require open heart surgery very early in her life. Have been at the hospital all week with two of our very best and dearest friends who have been diagnosed with cancer. I was going to run out last night and do a little Valentines shopping on Clif's day off, but... Clif had to go into work on his day off because the car selling flow at Carmax has been barely trickling in! So... I made a homemade card with purple, red, and pink construction paper. And I wrote a short message inside, because I was supervising two toddlers while glueing their Valentines together and holding a crying baby.
This year has been the very opposite of carefree. It has been care filled. And I don't know what happens in your marriage or relationship when there is lots of stress, but in ours it makes for lots of conflict. Not always ugly conflict, sometimes. But there is lots to work out, talk through, try to understand... and it is hard work. And so when we come to this day when traditionally our hearts are suppose to swoon and the love potion boil over... we are so tired we do good to give each other a smooch before Clif heads out the door for work!
So, this year I'm not really celebrating how tall and handsome and romantic Clif is. Though he is, for sure. But I'm celebrating how marriage is designed. How God calls the husband to sacrificially love his wife and then empowers him to do it. Clif's not perfect, but I would most certainly been a heap of hopelessness if I had not been loved so sweetly this year by the man God gave me to journey through life with. Its that never giving up kind of love. The kind that keeps it's nose to the grindstone. The kind that even when it doesn't understand and feels like it's failing miserably, it keeps coming back. The kind that keeps doing the hard work of relating, understanding, compromising, changing, even though it would be so much easier to buy season passes to the sport of the season and check out in your spare time.
I praise God for the love He demonstrated to us and calls us to. And the other thing I think is beautiful about Valentines Day~This sort of community wide celebration of romantic love... Is that God intended our marriages to cause a community wide celebration of His love! He called us to tend to our marriages so they are a picture to the world of the good news that we are LOVED and have been RESCUED. Our love for each other should be so sweet and remarkable that brothers and sisters who know our good God are encouraged and reminded of His love, and those who do not know Him become very curious!
I hope we are all blessed by Valentines Day this year. God designed us for love. He also designed romantic love between and husband and a wife for a grand purpose. As a sign! Pointing to him! So, whoever you are, and whatever your relationship status, I hope you will consider those marriages you know that point you to Christ and thank God for His grace in them and celebrate His radical, drastic love for us all!
