That way when we spend the whole year fumbling through love we'll have one day to count a success. One day to fill with flowers and chocolate. But in actuality, isn't that really about demonstrating our love to those around us and not about the loved?
Do we spend moments in sacrifice? Hours pouring over their heart. Learning them. Embracing them.
Really loving. Wholly for the sake of the good of their heart. Not for any return or recognition.
What does it look like to really love?
I'm aching. Lying in bed, my body weary, longing for rest. And my mind is drawn back to faces of this day. A young couple, eyes bright with love, gliding in through the doors. Going in to share a meal.
I'm walking out, arms heavy with baby. Out into the cold morning.
And I'm struck in that moment by their light, bouncing steps. The weightlessness of their love.
What happens when it gets messy? This love-thing. It does you know.
When the weight of it starts to wear heavy under the demands of a life. When the wounds start to ooze and the anger spills over...
Will they still look so bright?
When they have not only known the pains of birthing a baby, but the agony of birthing a marriage.
Or letting a marriage go.
The kind of love that walks through the fire. Has seen years of labor pains. The union of two hearts that know their vows by walking in them, breathing them. Or even dismantling them.
The love that feels as though you were birthed into it.
The love of broken hearts. Because we're all broken some way or another.
And when it starts to feel heavy. When the words run dry. When they're in the middle of winter. Will they still hold hands? Still glide through doors?
The seasons come and go in nature and in a lifetime. In a marriage. There is always winter before the spring. The time of barren rest preceding prolific blooming.
Love is really only true when its been tried and tested. Refined in the Fire.
Love is not love without sacrifice. The giving up of self.
And you can only carry your own heart. Only change you.
Sometimes you have to let go.
This day of putting love in a box. Of making it something to be bought. This day is hard to walk through when you're in the winter.
When the weight of a brokenness weighs heavy on your love.
So offer your love to the Greatest Lover that ever lived. Pour out your heart into the Hands pierced by love so vast there was Gratitude in the sacrifice of Life.
The Sacrifice of Life. For you.
And fill your heart with prayer and thanksgiving for the Gift of love. The love that holds strong even in the silence. The heart yet to be known.
For spring will come again. And the cold of winter will be forgotten. The roots will have grown deeper still. And the branches will reach ever stronger, ever higher.
This love is a Refining Gift. From the very Source of Love. From Love Himself. Every ache and need can be filled only in Him. For only He that Created your heart is able to Cradle it.
I wouldn't trade the depth of my Love for all the weightless joy in the world. The roots grown deep into the soil of life.
I am filled with Love. Emptied of Love.
"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all of 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." Ephesians 3:17-19
