Do you agree love is all you need?

Last Sunday was Valentine’s Day.

Personally, I have not received a love Valentine since I was divorced several years ago. I have dipped my toe in the relationship pool a couple of times but the water just wasn’t right. So I intentionally spend Valentine’s Day afternoons watching movies with love themes just to see if there is anything new under the sun since the day was named after Saint Valentine in the 5^th century.

What I do know is Valentine’s Day is a retail bonanza. Over 150 million cards are exchanged yearly and over $480 million dollars are spent on chocolate. (I buy my own special chocolate just for the day.) In 2006, folks spent over $2.6 billion dollars on jewelry for the occasion. WOW!

On the other hand, what happens if we look beyond love’s retail expressions?

Last year I wrote a blog titled How do you do love?  This this week I thought I would give romance a look from a different perspective, mine. I remembered something JoJo Moyes, the romantic novelist, wrote about love that fits my current frame of mind.

“What love depends on is where you are in relation to it. Secure in it, it can feel as mundane and necessary as air – you exist within it, almost unnoticing. Deprived of it, it can feel like an obsession; all-consuming, a physical pain. Love is the driver for all great stories: not just romantic love, but the love of a parent for a child, for family, for the country. It is the point just before consummation of it that fascinates: what separates you from love, the obstacles that stand in its way. It is usually at those points that love is everything “

I have visited all the love touchpoints mentioned above and I am left believing that love is the best drug for mind and body. Where there is love there is life. And it is from that place, I wrote a Valentine journal entry to the man who will make the best of me show up whenever we are together:

February 14, 2016

Darling,

I have been waiting for you so long. I knew there was someone who would make my reality better than my dreams.  I knew that with you I would not have to plot and plan how or when or where. I knew you would cherish me in spite of and not because of.  I knew that we could arrive together at a destination full of hope where we would pause and thank God for gifting us to one another.  

I knew you would come to me with a history of struggle and overcoming and forgiving and learning. We would be each other’s mirror, able to sit in silence ministering to each other’s sorrow or whispering comfort and strength in our labors. I knew we would come to see each other’s imperfections as gifts to one another.   

And so darling, welcome to the sitting room of my soul. I have been waiting for you with a love that is more than love.

Love may not be all you need, however its presence is a vital ingredient in life’s recipe. If you are not loving someone else, at least, get in the habit of treating yourself like someone you love?

    Until next time, remember,

• You are not alone.

• You are not your circumstances.

• You have everything within you to live a purpose-filled life.