Today is Valentine’s Day, when thoughts turn to monumental decisions like “chocolate or flowers,” “fancy restaurant or romantic dinner at home”? Earlier this week, I felt a sense of dread surrounding this day—the first Valentine’s Day in 31 years without my husband. But then I remembered last Valentine’s Day. I wrote about it in my Day 9 Advent Journal:

Last year Tess spent two-and-a-half months in the hospital and had seven surgeries within a four-month period. Simultaneously, our family was enduring the catastrophic events that I described in yesterday’s journal. Soon after the New Year, my body started reacting to all of the stress. I suffered severe headaches, developed corneal ulcers that destroyed a significant portion of my vision in one eye, and broke out in the most painful rash I have ever experienced. On the day of Tess’s discharge after the seventh and final surgery of her ordeal, I was finally able to slip away to the doctor to get help for the rash. I was emotionally spent from a toxic encounter earlier in the day and was grateful just to sit down in a sterile waiting room at the Tricare Clinic where no one knew me, needed me, or threatened me in any way. When I heard the text notification chime from my pocket, I instinctively reached for it, bracing myself for the likely negative intrusion into my moment of respite. Instead, I saw a message that included these words:

“You are dearly loved, admired, and deeply respected…Your love makes a difference and is beautiful even when unnoticed…You are loved and lovely. I pray that you can always live loved because that is your true identity.”

The words in between these were equally personal and powerful, but those declarations of love in the midst of such an unloving day were what wrecked me. Because as I read them, I realized that this particular cold, dark day happened to be Valentine’s Day and that through one of His sweet servants, God Himself had just delivered my one and only Valentine.

In the 365 days between last Valentine’s Day and this one, I have begun to understand what it really means to live loved, and it has nothing to do with men or chocolate or fancy restaurants.

“And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’…And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” (Genesis 3:8-9, 21, ESV)

Living loved is realizing that you believed a lie, turned away from God, and made mistakes that will have consequences for the rest of your life but that He went searching for you, found you, helped you realize you were lost, and made a sacrifice with which He could handstitch a covering for you.

“When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, ‘It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him.’ So they sent a message to Joseph, saying…please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.’ Joseph wept when they spoke to him…But Joseph said to them, ‘Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” (Genesis 50:15-16a, 17b , 19-20, ESV)

Living loved is forgiving those who commit evil acts against you—even when they strip you of all that you know and love and leave you imprisoned with no sign of justice—knowing that God can use even evil for a greater good.

“Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, ‘Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile…a Levite woman…conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.” (Exodus 1:22 and 2:1b-3, ESV)

Living loved is trusting God with everything and everyone that you love—even when that means letting them go.

“When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, ‘Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt?…For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.’ And Moses said to the people, ‘Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work out for you today…The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.’” (Exodus 14:10-11, 12b-14, ESV)

Living loved is receiving the deliverance of the Lord and resisting the temptation to flee back to comfortable bondage. It is abandoning fear for faith and resting in His promise to fight for you.

“But Ruth said, ‘Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people will be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.’” (Ruth 1:16-17, ESV)

Living loved is welcoming the people God brings alongside you even when it means they sacrifice something to join your journey. It is receiving when you would rather give and humbly admitting that you are in need.

“Then Job answered the Lord and said: ‘I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted’…And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job…And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.” (Job 42:1-2, 10, ESV)

Living loved is holding onto faith in the absolute goodness and sovereignty of God in the face of the unthinkable.

“Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.” (Psalm 126:6, ESV)

Living loved is embracing grief and pain and sorrow, feeling the emotions that make us human, but trusting God’s promises to return them to us as joy.

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now life in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20, ESV)

Living loved.

 

(Valentine created by Lydia Barnes.)