The Best Way To celebrate Valentine’s Day!
Since this article is coming out ON Valentine’s Day it just seemed appropriate to focus some attention on this prescribed love day, especially when it comes to our young daughters, but maybe not in the “love struck, cherub shooting, box of chocolates” way you think.
Working with adolescent girls and families and leaders raising them you can imagine that I hear the full spectrum of “I hate this hallmark holiday” to, “I am so excited for Valentine’s!!” to, my favorite, “I will neeeeeveeeeerrrr have a Valentine”. Remember, drama is a part of their neural mechanisms at this point of life.
But, instead of focusing on what we are told to focus on (cue every Netflix teen show and rom-com), let’s focus on what this day COULD be all about…
Simply celebrating, and being in gratitude for, the love we have received and
practicing giving love to others in your life.
For as long as I can remember Valentine’s Day begins with my husband getting all 5 of us ladies in the house a bouquet of flowers and after we enjoy them for the day, we choose the few we want to hold onto and then go and give the rest away to neighbors, friends and strangers (aka friends we haven’t met yet). We hug the widows, high five the kids and share conversations and joy filled sentiments with neighbors.
This tradition covers all the bases of love receiving and love giving and has been a great way to celebrate for many years.
The most widely used scripture at any wedding, including my own in 2001, is 1 Corinthians 13,
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,[a] but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
This is love in it's truest and most raw form. It isn't dressed up or adorned in hearts. It is people lifting up their neighbors, serving others and being a humble steward of the relationships they have been blessed with from parents, siblings, friends, and yes... sometimes, when the time is right, a romantic interest.
I encourage all of us to celebrate Valentine’s Day BIG this year and teach our young women to celebrate not in a worth chasing way, but in a worth confirming way by acknowledging all the love they receive and turning around and giving love to others, even strangers.
Happy Valentine’s Day!!
Also see What is Unfailing Love
