Happy Valentines’ Day
In preparation for writing this blog about Valentine’s Day, I tried to do a little research on the history of the day. It seems it started out as a celebration of one or more Christian martyrs back in 496 AD. Its current association with romantic love didn’t come about until the Middle Ages, when it became linked to Geoffrey Chaucer…and even then, this transition over to the day we celebrate love is a very murky journey at best!
I don’t know, maybe it’s fitting that the historical origins of the day we celebrate love is not easily explained. After all, forget Valentine’s Day…how do you explain love? It might be easier to explain love by what it isn’t, rather than what it is.
John Denver in his song Annie’s Song, said that love is like…
Like a night in a forest
Like the mountains in springtime
Like a walk in the rain
Like a storm in the desert
Like a sleepy blue ocean
John Denver wrote that song as a tribute to his wife, Annie. Legend has it that he wrote it in about 10 minutes while riding on a ski lift in Aspen, Colorado. In the second verse, Denver continues…
Come let me love you
Let me give my life to you
Let me drown in your laughter
Let me die in your arms
Let me lay down beside you
Let me always be with you
As powerful as the words, “Let me give my life to you, Let me drown in your laughter, Let me die in your arms”, they did little to enhance the love between Denver and his wife…they ended up getting a divorce. Denver, it seems, had as many Rocky Mountain lows as he did highs, and Annie had a difficult time adjusting to the demands of her husband’s success. So, as perfect as words can be…they do have their limits!
My wife and I watched the television program The Bachelor last night, and based on the number of couples who found love on the show…love is not about exotic locations, beautiful people, or helicopter rides either. The tragic death in recent days of Whitney Houston is a sad reminder that sometimes in our quest for meaningful love; we sometimes find it hard to love ourselves.
So, if love is not about all the “things” we seem to value as a society…money, power and fame, a worry-free life…then what is love?
I tell my children that I have a test for love. I tell them to imagine themselves on a plane which has just crash-landed on a runway. I tell them that the plane is about to catch on fire. The person whose hand you grab and pull them along after you exit the plane is a friend. The person you grab and shove through the escape hatch ahead of yourself is someone you love.
Love is about putting the needs of someone else ahead of your own. My son has a 3-week old newborn baby, and I smile as he recounts being up half the night with a crying baby. I don’t dare tell him that there will plenty more sleepless nights as his son grows.
So…love is about giving of oneself, with no expectation of a return on our investment. A great parent knows this instinctively. A poor parent stops loving unconditionally when they realize there’s not going to be a meaningful payout for them.
The key word in defining love is the word “unconditionally”. To truly love someone is to love them without limits. They don’t have to earn your love. There’s no implied quid pro quo. They don’t have to do anything…you simply love them!
The greatest test of love is the other person doesn’t even have to love you back. Very few of us humans have achieved that level of love, but it is something God does on a daily basis.
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! May you find the love of your life, and the wisdom to know it!
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