Valentines

Good morning, Friends! It’s been one of those mornings. I feel like I’ve been riding off in all directions at once. I hope I can tick enough things off my list today to get a couple of hours in my craft room. Retirement shouldn’t be so busy! 

I’m working on Valentines in the craft room these days. In elementary school Valentine’s Day was a favorite holiday. It fed my postal fettish. We decorated shoe boxes, cut slots in them, and stacked them on a shelf. That was our ”post office.” We started bringing Valentines two or three weeks before Valentine’s Day when we all got to open our shoe box.  

It was important that we give a Valentine to everyone of our classmates. I don’t remember if that was an official rule or just the teacher’s suggestion. Anyway, nobody was to be left out - and that’s as it should be. 

But that meant that a great deal of thought had to go into choosing Valentines for our classmates. There were what we called “mushy” Valentines - the ones that talked about love and kissing and - well, mushy stuff. And there were general Valentines that just wished the recipient a good day. 

It was a grueling process. After all, you didn’t want to send a mushy Valentine to that obnoxious boy that kept pulling your hair. But did you even want to send a mushy Valentine to a boy you liked? I mean  - when you’re in the fourth grade, that could be embarrassing. No telling what the repercusions might be. A lot of my mushy Valentines ended up being un-sent. 

These days I think of Valentine’s Day as a celebration of not only romantic love, but a celebration of God’s love for us - the Sacred Romance. 

I hope your day is good! ❤️ Don’t forget to do small things with great love.