I have always liked Valentine’s Day, and it’s not because of a need to be fawned over. Although, if you want to fawn over me, I will gladly accept your fawnery.
For my family, it’s a day for glorious tablescapes adorned with tacky glitter flowers and Target’s fanciest dollar area paper plates and cups, and the joy it brings an 8-year-old. It’s a chance to have something different to greet each other within the morning – Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s a day to think of love and choosing to be more kind and thoughtful.
Valentine’s Day gets a bad rap because like most things, we now make it about
what we have, what we don’t have, what people will see us having, and what we stand to gain.
The last few days I’ve been learning about our ability to change the narrative of almost anything, and I think we can do that with this holiday. Hallmark might have made it giant, but we can make it simple.
Today G.R. put out the paper plates and made a big deal for our girls, even though he could do without any of it. My friends brought my family lunch at school since I am out of town. My daughter threw up on the way to school,😷 and I had several texts from people offering to hold her hair and bring her crackers. My daughter’s PE coach sent me pics of my daughter and husband in action at school.
Those actions are examples of love in action amidst everyday life.
(And writing this is not bragging, it’s a choice to see the kindness around me because I often move through the day taking it for granted.)
While these things were happening at home, I have spent time immersed in a different world on the Texas border. I am staying with a team dedicated to improving the lives of asylum seekers, unaccompanied minors in detention, and the impoverished within their local community through prayer, education, and various forms of action. Their kindness seems effortless and blows me away. They are working to change the current narrative surrounding immigrants and America.
Their love is hardly a fabricated holiday production; it is the gritty, hard, messy Jesus kind. Theirs is not Hallmark love. It is agape.
Honestly cannot think of a better Valentine’s Day than today.
I am spending every moment appreciating and learning from the loving kindness that surrounds me.