This year, the festivities started last weekend. I received two packages, from my parents and from my church family, in one afternoon.
The sweet and savory goodies inside were delightful, but it was the handwritten notes in each package that brought back the warm fuzzies from my childhood.
Bible verses and personal messages told me that I was a unique person, cared for and prayed for by many back home.
That same weekend I also received cards from two important women in my life: my sister and my grandma. There are few loves as dear as the bond of sisterhood, and these thoughtful gifts reminded me of that.
On this Valentine’s morning I had the opportunity to create a little magic of my own for some adorable children. I played my harp at a toddler-mother tea party in our Dining Commons. What a joy it was to watch the little girls in princess gowns and the little boys in sweater vests play tag around the tables, while their mothers tried to snatch a few sips of tea and mop up spills and sugar from the pink tablecloths.
The pièce de résistance occurred on the evening of Valentine’s Day. At nine o’clock I stumbled out of my evening class to find my fiancé waiting for me with a half-dozen red roses. We grabbed a snack at a self-serve frozen yogurt bar, and then relaxed for the rest of the snowy evening in my uncle’s Jacuzzi.
The widespread sentiment among my generation is an animosity toward Valentine’s Day. “Happy Single’s Awareness Day” was the most common greeting around campus this week. And I understand the feeling: we all crave love. It’s what we were made for. And while romantic love is wonderfully fulfilling, I think that we zero in on one specific aspect of love and forget its multiple meanings. This week I’ve experienced love with family, friends, strangers and my fiancé. Perhaps we shouldn’t think about ourselves so much when it comes to Valentine’s Day; perhaps we should spend this holiday showing others our love for them.
I’d like to close with a prayer that I also consider the most encompassing passage about love that’s ever been written. For love is not something that originates in us—it’s a gift from our Heavenly Father:
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
-Ephesians 3:14-21
