Loved...

Ah, yes... the regulatory Valentine's day post. I was really depressed about it this year and was basically like, who cares, it's not like it's a holiday that really means anything. It's a Hallmark holiday, a day to recieve flowers and chocolate and be disappointed when Mr. Right is either absent or just doesn't make me feel as special as I was hoping. I think I will just boycott the holiday!

And in a way, I did just that. I spent the weekend at a retreat in Dallas with over 250 other college students from all over the South Central US. The conference was part of the Navigators, and I am in one of their small-group Bible studies here at A&M. It was a great weekend, a great roadtrip there and back, lots of laughter and late nights, amazing prayer, and very little sleep. :-) It's a little weird doing stuff with the Navs group from A&M, because the only thing I am able to do is the small group study; I am busy with dance company pretty much any time Navs plans anything! So it was good to mingle with a few of my fellow Aggies.

OK, that was a random side note and had nothing to really do with solving my boycott of such a world-wide holiday. :-)

Valentine's day has always been pretty low-key at my house. We would usually have a special dinner at home, perhaps write a sweet note to a sibling, and generally have a normal day. I've never been one to get the whole conversation hearts thing (I mean, have you actually read a whole package of them? Sheesh... when I was little they said cute sayings!), and I missed out on the idea of buying premade valentines, filling in the "to" and "from" lines, and stuffing them in your friends' lockers and hoping that you can sneak one to your secret crush. I'm used to February 14th being a normal day. And I knew that hanging around College Station on Valentine's day would only be awkward at best. :-)

So, what are girls like me supposed to do? There is no Mr. Right in the picture (and I'm not looking either!), my roommate's out of town and my girlfriends from dance company have their own plans with their boyfriends/sororities. And to top it all off I just had the DTR talk (Define The Relationship) with one of my guy friends here--I just defined that there is nothing going on between us and there is no hope for anything in the future... yet. What am I supposed to do when Happy Hearts day rolls around? It's a little hard to ignore it, but what else do I do?

You know how people say, "Enjoy your single years, you'll have a special guy in time. Wait for it."Gee thanks... or then the ever-present, "Make Jesus the love of your life for now. Let Him woo you. Fall in love with Him." That sounds so cliché, and I just kind of brushed it off. And then I remembered a verse that an older lady told me several years ago. She had a group of us older girls from homeschool group over to her house for a Valentine's party and she shared this verse with us:
Romans 5:5 "Such hope never disappoints or deludes or shames us, for God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us." (Amplified)

Wow... God's love never disappoints us, betrays our hopes, or makes us feel guilty for wanting to be loved and treasured. He didn't sprinkle His love into our lives, He poured it out into our hearts. And He did it by the Holy Spirit who is a deposit guarraneteeing His return! Or the Message says it this way:
"We're never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can't round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit! "

This is no case of a small box of Walmart chocolates and a semi-wilted boquet of red airbrushed roses from the grocery store, this is more Godiva and Dove chocolate than I could eat in my lifetime, a personal rose garden with a different breed for every day of the year! And even more than that! I can't round up enough vases, or enough friends to help me eat the chocolate! It keeps getting poured out...and the best part is that it doesn't stop at 12:01am on the 15th--it's not a once-a-year holiday!

So yeah, it's nice to get flowers and a card and spend some time with a special guy, but I think that I may just boycott the holiday in my own way, head to a coffee shop and have a date with the Lord. Seems that I've been longing for something, and I think I just found out the ultimate source of that love! In some ways it doesn't make my desire for human love any easier to ignore, but I've got a lot of containers to "round up" if I am going to try to fathom the depths of His love!

Ah, it's good to be loved...