Love. February is the month of love... or that is what we are told. We are surrounded by reds and pinks and reminders of lovey-dovey couples. The aisles are filled with sugary treats to woo our loved ones with. Floral shops offer good deals on bouquets that will be bought at the last minute. It is the one month out of the year that we are forced to show love. It is expected of us. And really that is only for the two weeks leading up to February 14th. After that, the expectation to shower our lovers with gifts wanes. We go through the giggly motions of determining who our Valentines will be. Who will get the coveted boxes of chocolates? Will we be able to make up for the love we forgot to show in the previous year?
I enjoy Valentine's Day for one simple truth... conversation hearts. It is the only time of year to purchase these goodies. And that is it. Valentine's Day doesn't do much for me after that. How can I be so hateful, you ask? For this reason... we should show love EVERYDAY of the year. We should not limit ourselves to one day a year where we go out of our way to buy cards, candies, and flowers for the people we love. We should do that everyday. Now I am not saying to buy gifts everyday. That would be prohibitively expensive. But saying "I love you" is cheap. Writing "I love you" on a post-it note is easy. Drawing a flower on a piece of paper takes no time at all. Making a hand-made card is better than Hallmark. Don't get me wrong... I enjoy getting flowers and cards and candy at Valentine's Day. We should continue the tradition with full-force. But we should also continue with the love-fest for the other 364 days of the year.
And before I get called out, I will be the first to admit that I am a little more than lax on showing my love for friends and family. I need to write more post-it notes, make more cards, and say more of those 3 litle words. I need to be more intentional. I need to stop making excuses and realize that it is not how much the gift costs in dollars and cents, but how much it costs in heartbeats. I get a bigger kick out of making a card than I do buying one... the thought of knowing I made a friend smile makes all the time putting one card together worth it.
What is my point in all this, you ask? Because I realized that I have an enormous amount of love in me. A little girl taught me that. She taught me how to love. She taught me that we should never take for granted those that are in our lives. And she continues to teach me about the capacity of my heart. She reminds me everyday that I love deeper than I realize.
Who is teaching you? Is it one person or many? We all have a tremendous capacity to love. We should show it everyday... not limit ourselves to one day a year.
Try it... you never know what you will get in return.
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