A Prayer for the Day After Valentine’s Day
It’s a red and pink hangover
With expectations met, but mostly not
Where we confess we want more love – more perfect love.
Instead we got boxes of sugar marketed as chocolate, stuffed animals that serve no purpose and lots of questions about why one day is marked as the day of love.
When you said you ARE love. All the time. Every. Day.
There is no day to feel more connected or more lonely – just a day to wear red and hearts and buy last minute over priced gifts at the drug store.
Thank you Jesus that today is NOT Valentine’s Day.
Because it is one more day lived.
And it is one more day to know that perfect love is not found in Russell Stover or Hallmark or FTD.
It’s not cheap like that.
We talk of “cheap grace” and your love is the opposite.
It is expensive grace, the kind that costs.
It cost you dearly.
And sometimes, when I let it, it costs me too.
But I confess I tune it out, that true gift, and wait for the cheap tokens to be delivered.
Because though I want a note passed to me that says Be My Valentine,
I have to trust your love in nudges of the spirit, of inspiration in the clouds, in echoes of my children’s eyelashes hitting their cheeks.
Because this is where your love screams, but I need to listen with different ears in order to hear.
So I repent.
For not listening to those clamoring eyelashes that with every blink gong of your miracles.
Forgive me.
Help me to close the heart-shaped box of chocolate and open the heart you gave me.
The one that beats in my chest.
That rhythms my soul.
Help me to hear the batting eyelashes,
The love language of you, the creator.
Help me to appreciate the real gifts offered on February 15th.