Feels Like a Valentine

There's a mystical passing of time that happens when you're a Gramma. You're snuggling with or reading to or coming the hair of or wiping the face of or laughing with a newer version of the children you raised once yourself. It's dejavu all over again, quite literally.

And it makes me remember things. This week I'm remembering Valentines.

Quite a few Valentines Days ago, when David was about five and Kristyn seven, I decided to do something different than the little grocery story Valentines we'd always done with the kids. They were fun, sure, with their cartoon characters and cheesy, mushy ways of saying "Be mine." Tiny little envelopes. All good fun.

But I felt that this particular year, the kids were old enough to have me write out an actual letter of love.

So a few weeks before hand, I sat down with heart stickers and a red fine point marker, and I started to write them out. I wrote all about how much my life had changed because of them, how deeply grateful I was that God chose us to be a family, how crazy I was about them. And as I'm writing I'm crying, my mother-love pouring out on the page.

I put the stickers in various locations on the letter and the envelope, sealed them, prayed over them, and waited for Valentine's Day.

The morning of, I could hardly wait to give the kids my letters. I handed Kristyn hers, and she opened it, read it herself and came gave me a hug. "Thank you Mommy," she said with her arms tight around my neck.

David however, was not impressed. I handed him the envelope and he started to wail. "That's not my Valentine! I don't want that! I want my Valentine!"

"But honey." I was genuinely confused. "This is your Valentine. Mommy wrote you a love letter."

It took some convincing, but finally David climbed into my lap and rested his snotty little face on my shirt to let me read the letter.

I read it carefully, slowly, each declaration of my confidence in him, my delight in him explained in simplicity and sincerity. I showed him the heart stickers. I told him how crazy I was about him.

And when it was all done I asked him what he thought.

"I liked it Mommy," he said. "When I saw it at first, it didn't look like a Valentine. But when you read it to me, it felt like a Valentine."

To whomever you are saying I love you this weekend, and from whomever you are being loved, I hope things feel like a Valentine for you. I hope you feel loved, because you are. I hope you feel full of dreams and potential and wonder and beauty, because you are. I hope you enjoy the giving and receiving of love in all it's loveliness.

May the love of God empower your relationships, fuel your conversations and be unmistakable to your soul.