Valentines Day around our house wasn’t flowers, candy, gifts, jewelry—none of the usual hyped-up ‘trappings’ that mainstream America says is absolutely necessary.
The gifts I received were infinitely BETTER!
My day started with our normal quiet personal scripture study time out in the library. Then it progressed to prodding the middle school-ers out the door at a reasonable approximation of ‘on-time’ while Jeff made sure the house didn’t burn down while I was gone. Then it was off to school for a quick parent/teacher meeting and a day full of volunteer work that happened to coincide with holiday parties. When a good electric pencil sharpener proved harder to find than an ice cube in the Sahara Desert, my sweetheart willingly brought one of ours from home out so I could sharpen about 78 really dull & broken pencils. (Maybe ultra sharp pencils in the hands of 6 & 7 year olds isn’t the best idea—those kids were pretty excited to see those surgically sharp points!) When my stint in 1st grade was up, my boyfriend went with me to Qdoba for lunch—they had a BOGOF (for a Valentines Kiss) and he didn’t want me to resort to kissing a stranger. Sweet of him! Then I went back to school to do my afternoon volunteer work in K’s class, it was really hard working on multiplication facts with kids who were biding their time till they got to gorge themselves on candy. I came home to find that Jeff had put chicken in the crockpot and was getting ready to shred it for dinner—he doesn’t eat fish and that is the usual Tuesday fare. While we waited for the rest of dinner to cook we practiced our dance skills for later on in the night. How it made my heart go pitter-patter when he said “Hey, I thought we were going to practice more!” Once we had all inhaled dinner he took K with him to church to set up for Cotillion while I drove a van full of techno-geek middle school boys around. They really are fun boys! At the end of the evening we were teaching the YM & YW to Foxtrot (slow-slow-quick-quick). Not only was it fun to get these kids dancing with each other (as opposed to grinding), but it gave me the chance to dance with my sweetie on Valentines Day!
If you couldn’t read between the lines, these are the gifts that I get not only on Valentines Day, but EVERY DAY!
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a husband who relies on the Lord and is actively pursuing a personal relationship with our Savior, Jesus Christ.
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an active & interested partner in the life-time calling of parenthood
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a supportive friend who will drop everything and come to my aid—even if it’s just delivering a pencil sharpener!
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a nice source of ‘benefits’ when I need them, be it kisses, or hugs, or …letting me put my freezing cold toes on him in bed.
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a self-sufficient man (thanks Bob & Corry!) who needs me enough that I feel needed, but not so much that I count him as one of the kids
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a closet ballroom dancer—who looks forward to dancing with me when we have the opportunity
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an eternal marriage (he is stuck with me forever!! ha ha—sucker!!)
on top of all that, Jeff gives me the gift of laughter, patience, and he keeps me grounded and sane!
For all of the little things he does that make me wonder, there are 20 that make me so grateful for him.
So do I miss all the trappings of things?
Not a bit.