I have to admit, I’m a romantic. I’m idealistic and hopeful and hopelessly romantic. So I don’t mind Valentines Day. Yes, it’s a commercialized, capitalized day where we’re all a little forced to do and buy things for our loved one, should we have one, whether we feel up to it or not. But for me, its an opportunity to take a random day to love on those we love.
However.
I also see the potential in Valentine’s Day every year for a whole host of evils. There is the temptation, for a romantic like me, to never be satisfied with what my husband has done, to build up impossible expectations and then be angry at him. It can be a chance criticize and feel disparaging things toward my loved one.
Valentine’s Day can become Entitlement Day, where I am owed SOMETHING from my husband, something from someone {anyone?} to tell me I’m loved.
It can be National Pressure Day, where men feel pressured to come through in some spectacular way for their love, and to top it every year, with yet the constant nagging hint that they will never succeed in this endeavor.
Which leads to National Disappointment Day.
It can be National Single’s Awareness Day, as we are all aware, because it can also be Single’s National Day of Complaint. Those without a current boyfriend or husband can be made to feel small, insignificant, unworthy, unloved, and unseen. They {incorrectly, I’m afraid} assume every other woman who has a man is being doted upon, dated, wooed, lavished with flowers and gifts, and feeling wholly loved and satisfied.
For married and unmarrieds alike, it can become National Comparison Day. This is a real danger. Women post pictures to all social media outlets to give their guy some props for the efforts he went to to lavish love on his girl. Women then compare and feel more or less loved compared to what so-and-so’s husband/boyfriend did for her.
Somehow for all of us, I’m convinced, this day has the potential to be a depressing day. But it also doesn’t have to be that way.
Our hearts were made for more. Our hearts were not made to be satisfied by a human love. A human love is wonderful and satisfying in a lot of ways, but for those of you who aren’t married yet, let me go ahead and tell you, it still doesn’t fill the void. You will still face the temptation every year on Valentine’s Day to be disappointed. Having a husband or a boyfriend will not fix that, because its an issue within our own hearts, not an issue with someone else’s actions.
We were made to want to be loved. Proverbs 19:22 says “What a person desires is unfailing love.” We were made with an aching need to be loved. That is right, normal, okay–don’t kill that off. The painful part is to keep that part of your heart open in the face of disappointment after disappointment.
I have the sweetest husband, who loves me tremendously. But, he is not built to be a romantic guy. It’s just not his strength. So for a romantic like me, I have struggled with being disappointed, angry, entitled, jealous, etc. But even the times when my husband has done an incredible job, I still find myself struggling with dissatisfaction. What is that?! What God has taught me is that disappointment can be an avenue to breaking my heart open. It can speak to a deeper longing. A longing that cannot be satisfied by human and the earthly and tangible. Disappointment can remind me that I was made for More. I was made for a love that is immeasurable. Disappointment can be the avenue through which God gives me the greatest gift, the gift of Himself.
The reality is, as Oswald Chambers said, “No love of the natural heart is safe unless the human heart has been satisfied by God first.” Before I got married, I heard the advice of a wise woman to pray every day, “Satisfy us early with Your unfailing love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days!” (Ps. 90:14)
What great advice it was, something I have never forgotten. It’s HIS unfailing love that I was made for, that my heart longs for. A human love can point to it, even a broken human love will always point to my need for His far greater, far surpassing love.
In this way, I’ve come to see the disappointments as gifts. Arrows always pointing me back to my Savior. The Savior who made it that way, who wounds me so that He can heal me. So that I come to Him. So that I have nowhere else to turn, with a heart so prone to wander. That I’ll have tried every other well and found it to leave me still thirsty.
He can fill your hearts, ladies. He alone can fill your hearts. He wants to. He will. Ask Him to, today. Ask Him to blow your mind. Ask Him to be sweet to you in the ways you need Him to. Ask Him to minister to your human girly heart that craves affection, adoration, unfailing love. He is willing to be anyone’s Valentine.
Don’t listen to the whisper that your value and worth and dependent upon getting roses, or chocolate, or a card. It’s ridiculous! Your value and worth come from God alone, who made you in His own image, with incredible detail and foresight and love (see Psalm 139).
As you let God minister to your disappointment and you need to receive love today, in return, pour out what lavish love He has given you on others. Find others to bless with little gifts, hugs, and love. Give what it is you yourself are needing to someone else today.
I hope that no matter who you are, you know your great worth and value today and that your heart is met in the sweetest ways by Jesus.
“May your unfailing love be with us, Lord, even as we put our hope in you.” {Psa. 33:22}
“How priceless is your unfailing love, O God! People take refuge in the shadow of your wings.” {Psa. 36:7}
“The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.'” {Jer. 31:3}
“Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life.” {Psa. 143:8}
“May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promise to your servant.” {Psa. 119:76}
“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you.” {Isa. 54:10}
everything He gives 