Every year Valentine’s Day falls in the middle of our frigid Midwestern winter. How ironic that a holiday celebrating fiery emotions, presents itself at this coldest season of year. But perhaps its timing isn’t a paradox but a symbol. Love in its purest form is a choice of the heart. It chooses to persist in spite of an often dark and uncaring world.
At this moment, a steady snow falls outside my window, blanketing my home in a crystalline sheet of white. I sit comfortably in front of a warm fire with a lazy cat resting on my legs. While others plan extravagant date nights for Valentines, I long for a quiet evening at home with my husband cuddling on our couch.
Yet our culture leads us to believe that this is not enough. We buy into the lie that love must involve intense physical attraction at all times to be real. This romantic kind of love seeks excitement to keep the heart’s fire burning. It’s not satisfied with anything less than an all consuming blaze. Without continually adding fuel, it burns out quickly, leaving nothing but emptiness in its place.
In contrast, mature love is a choice of the heart to persist in all circumstances. This love resembles the embers in our wood stove when we set the damper nearly closed. These coals burn with a soft glow, long into the night. In the morning, a little stirring brings their flames back to life. What appears dead, lies dormant beneath a layer of ash, ready to re-ignite again.
So it is with true love. It never dies. Old age, poor health, distance or poverty cannot consume real love. In fact, these challenges tend instead to enhance it. When love is a choice of the heart rather than simply an emotion, the fire of adversity refines it. The result is a work of art, infinite in beauty.
Don’t get me wrong. Like any woman, I welcome the romance of an evening out, a bouquet of flowers or a box of chocolates from my husband for Valentine’s Day. But all this would be meaningless, if not for the other 364 ordinary days when we made love a choice of the heart for our marriage regardless of our circumstances.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
1 Corinthians 13:7-8
