09 Feb On Valentine’s Day

I think I saw the red and pink hearts in Target somewhere around January 3rd. I think I actually bought the kiddos their class valentines somewhere around January 7. (Planning ahead for the win!).

I used to hate Valentine’s Day, and I still think it is problematic at best.

But we are raising our kids in a world that is teaching them their value is external–the voices they come fast and furious, and not always are they loving and kind. So we start Valentine’s day, like the days before, and all the days after being the loudest voices in an increasingly louder culture.

We celebrate this day with our children, with flowers, with servanthood, with handmade cards, celebrating how much they are loved and cherished by us, a love not earned, a love freely given.

We want to start a movement on Valentine’s day that talks about real, authentic love, in all it’s raw, powerful, tear stained, sacrificial glory … not that you can’t have that when you are married (I do), but you can have it when you are not.

Single parents. Special Needs parents. Adoptive parents. Just us regular parents. Non-parents. Single people (as in, not all loved up on somebody and buying chocolate and heart shaped plastic items). People who make it their life’s work to rescue women and children from sex trafficking. There’s more. People who give their life for another, soldiers, police, firefighters. The ones who serve us and our children – Teachers, nurses, librarians. The list goes on and on.

On Valentine’s Day

On Valentine’s day, frankly every day, we want our children to cherish the ones they love, and who love them. To shine the love of Christ in a world growing dimmer by the second, and to show love to the ones the world passes over, the marginalized, the “other.”

We want them to be adults and find value in the relationships they have, not the ones they wish they had on a day the world tells you that romantic love is the best kind of the love. We want them to know that a Savior’s love is the best kind of love.

We want to be a voice of love, of gospel, and of grace. A voice that affirms their dignity and beauty from the inside out, a voice that teaches them to see the Imago Dei imperfectly reflected in themselves and the others around them, and to act accordingly.

A voice that tells them time and again – we love you. We always will. And nothing in this life, or any other, can ever ever change that

We celebrate Valentine’s day with our children. They are our love story too.

~M.