Another Valentine’s Day has come and gone…and I bet I’m not the only one who’s kind of glad it’s over.
I think I’m becoming a certifiable Valentine scrooge.
Not because I don’t love people. I do, and some of them even love me back, amazingly enough.
And I’m not jaded by heartbreaking memories of past Valentine’s Days . Okay, well, maybe there were some lean years during junior high school, but not nearly bad enough to qualify as traumatic.
I met my husband when I was 17 and he has sweetly remembered every Valentine’s Day since—and that’s a BUNCH– so I have no personal axe to grind here.
So why do I inwardly cringe when this day rolls around every year?
One reason is that it feels suspiciously like a “foliday”—a fake holiday—possibly foisted upon us by retailers who sell love stuff like cards, flowers, jewelry and those little candy hearts (the over-ingesting of which can make you long to have your stomach pumped—trust me on this).
While I truly appreciate special-occasion gestures from my excellent husband , I most enjoy those loving things he does even when the peer pressure gun isn’t pointed at his head.
I suspect Valentine’s Day may even actually encourage some guys to be romantic slackers the rest of year. Sorry, but buying a few roses at a grocery store on Feb. 14 isn’t license to act comatose for the next 364 days. I’m just sayin’.
Here’s another reason I’m not crazy about Valentine’s Day: It’s just so darn loaded with stress and angst for lots of people.
Fearing they will disappoint or appear slack, boyfriends and husbands are under enormous pressure to venture into foreign, scary retail territory to spend money on things that don’t even have engines or digital controls. How stressful for them. “Deer in the headlights” doesn’t even begin to describe it.
And we women have to wonder if our men will ante up and make us feel as loved as we think we deserve to feel. How stressful for us.
I heard a single guy say he won’t even initiate a dating relationship between December and March because navigating Christmas and Valentine’s Day is just too awkward and stressful.
The day can be downright painful for people who are single (and don’t want to be) or suffering matrimonial misery. The knife of loneliness often cuts a bit more deeply on February 14.
(Hang in here—my rant is nearly over.)
My last beef with Valentine’s Day is this: It focuses on a second-rate kind of love. Sorry, but it’s true.
The romantic, human love we so elevate on this day is a nice perk—heaven knows I do appreciate and enjoy it—but it is, nevertheless, inferior to the much greater, transcending, perfect love God offers us.
Listen to some of God’s descriptions of His better love: patient, kind,
When you find a date or mate that offers ALL that, ALL the time, write a book and wait for Oprah to call.
Human love is wonderful, but at its best, it’s still just an imperfect reflection of God’s love.
“We love,” the Apostle John wrote, “because God first loved us.”
God’s love is for everyone who will accept it. You don’t have to earn it, buy it, or fear losing it. It doesn’t change, even if we do. And God sent something infinitely better than flowers and chocolate to express His heart: His very own Son.
The love above all loves. Now that’s something to celebrate…every day.