Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day!!! I just love Valentines Day. It has changed a lot from when I would get those Valentines in the envelope on the front of my desk at school. But more on that later. I had my husband draw a name out of a basket before breakfast and the lucky winner is...Alica from Happily Married to...The Cows. So Alica if you send me your snail mail I will be mailing the heart thing I made. Thank you so much for entering I will have a give away for March. I hope you will have as much fun as I have.

I tried to explain to someone what love was, try it sometime it is really hard. Our society has made love about what you feel rather than what you do. Love is an action word and it requires so much to really make it work. When I was brand new married, I was looking through my Mom's cookbooks. She had a really old one and I picked it up and was looking through it. In it the lady told a story.
It seems that when she first got married and she would cook breakfast and then her husband would go out to tend to the farm and expect dinner on the table when he came in at noon. She found that being married was such hard work and such a grind and she hated living on a farm. As she thought about it she became very discontent with her life. She said the more she thought about it the more miserable she became.

It was almost dinner time and she just threw something together for her husband to eat. He didn't complain and she didn't say much but she knew she didn't love him anymore. That bothered her very much because it wasn't that long when he has swept her off of her feet, with his smile and his touch and his humor. In fact, in the story, she said, " She felt close to hatred for him now."

I was pretty startled reading this as a new bride and couldn't think of ever feeling that way about my wonderful, sweet husband, who always made me laugh. I continued to read.

Then she said that working on a farm is hard work, they had no near neighbors so they had to work together to take care of themselves. She said that afternoon she thought, since I don't love him anymore why don't I just act like I do. So she said, one thing her husband loved was cookies. She hadn't baked in a long time. She went out to collect the eggs and as she walked back she thought, I will just do one thing nice for him each day. So she made cookies. Her husband was so happy when he came in that night and they sat down to a better supper than she had provided for dinner. While she wasn't very talkative she wasn't as angry.

She said, that she did that and each day she did one nice thing and then she woke up one morning and she was madly in love again. Then she said, that love isn't about feeling but of the will. She went on to say that they had celebrated 50+ years of marriage and how happy she was now with her life.

I read that and it has stuck with me all of these years. There are many more times I think I am angry and mad and grumpy and all I have to do is one nice thing and my whole attitude changes. So when I think of love, life is more than just flowers and a box of chocolates. To me this says it best.

" To aim at loving instead of being loved requires sacrifice. Love reaches out, willing to be turned down or inconvenienced, expecting no personal reward, wanting only to give." (Elisabeth Elliot)

" Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." ( 1 Corinthians 13: 4-5)

I tell Emilie and Nik how it will be and now they both look at me and at each other in total disbelief that they would ever think wrong of the other person. I smile and tell them why we never had a hand gun in the house. We thought we might get so mad as we used to that one of us would kill the other one. Yep it is true. Life is so much better now. :)

Have a lovely Valentines Day,
~Kim~