Valentines Day

          I decided to change what Valentines day is for me. I decided to make it a beautiful, and glorious celebration. Not just for the married or coupled, but for everyone. It's for everyone who loves.  Valentines Day is about love, and love is not a fling, or a present wrapped in paper, or flowers. Love is not just having a boyfriend or girlfriend for a day, or being married. Love is not the feeling in your pants when you make out with someone. It's not cheap, artificial, or surfacey.

         Love is the feeling you get when I look at a good friend and are so ineffably thankful for thier friendship and how I’d do anything for them, or how when I look at all my brothers I feel a loving thankfulness swell up in side me, how I look at my parents and see how hard they work and how much they love me. It’s that feeling I get when I think of Jesus Christ and his uncrushable, unceasing, totally gloriously, unfailing, never-ending, completely accepting love. I love to celebrate, and appreciate what love really is. I like to know that there was a man named Valentine and how he went to jail because he believed in love, and that marriage/relationships survived on the unselfish love of God alone. How he not only married people, but ministered and counseled to them because he knew that the love of God can surpass all things. That through that love that we could all strive to love each other perfectly. Valentine's Day is a day to celebrate love and what it is and what it means no matter what kinda of love you are celebrating. It’s not only about being in a romantic relationship. The people who think of it like this are easily compared to the people who look past the meaning of Christmas and only celebrate the gifts. Celebrate the relationships you see. Your parents marriage, your friends relationship or marriage, or your relationships with your parents, friends, siblings, or most importantly, your heavenly father.

          I believe even if you have a broken heart, you can celebrate love. So many look at love after a divorce, an unfaithful spouse, or their own break up and see nothing worth celebrating. Their heart is broken. But it's only when our hearts break that what's inside can be spilled out - love, compassion, hope, and understanding. My heart  is broken - it feels shattered. It's broken for men, women and children who are hurting, for my family, and for my friends, for the young women and young men I know who are lost, lonely, or have no self-worth, and who's hearts are also broken. It's broken for broken marriages, families, and lives.  My heart is broken, and I think that's a great place to start changing minds, lives, and worlds. I want to be a broken heart leading another broken heart to healing. I celebrate broken hearts because it is the broken hearted that end up changing the world.  There is always love worth celebrating. Even when your heart is broken.

            - Happy Valentines Day!

"Harbor me in the eye of storm, and I'm holding on to love you swore." - John Mark McMillian