A Lesson in True Love

I’ve always loved Valentine’s Day.  I love the hearts and flowers and the pink and red and the sugar and smiles.  I love the perforated cards sold in cardboard boxes that schoolchildren give to their classmates.  I love this day.  It is a sparkly, glittery, girly-girl kind of holiday and deep inside – well, really not so deep – I’m a sparkly, glittery girly-girl. Ironically, though, God made me a mama of boys.  But, I’ve realized in my 20 years of raising these boys to men that He had things to teach me through this unexpectedly wonderful reality.  It’s so like Him to do that.  To give us something so special – but that we never even knew to ask for.  Oh, the book I could write about this blessing. And to my great delight, one of the most special things He has ever given me through this mothering journey is the new opportunity to watch my sonlavish hearts and flowers and pink and red and sugar and smiles on his girl.  His Valentine.  I am so relishing the witness of this love.  It’s sweet and it’s deep and it’s rooted in Him.  He has picked the kind of girl we hoped he would pick.  And of course, I don’t reallyknow where it’s going even though I catch myself wishing. But whatever He is doing in the perfect plan I know that He has, it’s an unexpectedly wonderful reality right now. And I so pray that it’s teaching them things. I hope they learn that the luster of new love tarnishes sooner than they expect it to.  That it won’t always be as effortless as they once believed it would be.  They will get to the work of real love more quickly than Hollywood suggests and it will be even better than they once believed it could be. I hope they learn that there will be holes in their hearts that the other can’t fill.  That there will always be tiny spaces where the light still comes through.  They can’t be each other’s everything.  But, they will see the infinite value in being just the right something that the other one needs. I hope they learn that Valentine’s Day is nothing more than a fun and lighthearted pause in a cold, winter month.  That it isn’t real, and it doesn’t have meaning in the way that true love does. And they have to understand true love before they can ever hope to reflect real love to each other. Two thousand years ago in a dark garden True Love prayed desperate fearful prayers and sweated blood the night before He gave up His life to reconcile us to the God who created us and doesn’t want eternity without us.  The God who polishes the tarnished luster of our love for each other. Who fills the holes in our hearts and wants to be our everything.  And who has real and meaningful love ready to bestow on those who seek it. I hope my son and his sweet Valentine girl learn this and know it deep in themselves.  It’s the only way they will ever be able to show it to each other.  We love, because He first loved us.