I’m up early on this Valentine’s Day, been up for quite awhile, thoughts swirling around my head like little helicopters. Not the traditional Valentine thoughts. I don’t have one. Not a man one, at least. I’m not good at man valentines. I know this because they tell me so. By leaving; by choosing others. I don’t blame them. I’m whimsy and fun. But then I want to crawl in and make myself a home. And that seems to cost too much for a man, at least the ones I pick. Clearly, I am not good at it. I don’t like this holiday because it feels manufactured to make you feel on the outside when you don’t have a valentine. It’s bittersweet and makes me hunker down like when I’m in a bitter wind and waiting for it to blow past. So, on this Valentine’s Day, I’m thinking of things that matter to me and trying to shape my smoothie into a heart design. It feels a little like when you win the consolation prize and you give yourself that “it’s really okay” speech, when deep down inside it makes you wince and isn’t really totally okay at all. The boat ride on days like this can get choppy in the heart. But I white knuckle it and find I can live through it after all. Because after all, Valentine’s Day isn’t a sacrament in the Bible except that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,” and that, it turns out, is the only valentine that will ever really last and not get mad at you or get distracted or worse, die.
She matters to me. Yesterday, my girl and I spent a day being spontaneous, which is the heartbeat of my little free spirited self. I thrive on the happy in the u turns in life that cause you to end up at a movie that you didn’t plan on because it just occurs to you to go. We shot guns for the first time and hung our targets up on the wall at home to remember this day. She outdid me with her aim. I don’t mind at all. We ate fried chicken fingers dipped in sauce in our car because we like how it feels; warm and cozy and quiet and not all frenetic fast food restauranty and we get to pick our own background music on the radio. We talk about the heavy in the movie that made us both cry; the sadness at seeing a father have to lay his head down on his dead son’s chest and say goodbye. I think in my head how it scares me a little to look to the day when this girl is off busy somewhere and not beside me sharing everyday adventures like this. I don’t have the money to buy myself distraction or friends when fear or pain sets in like that. I think how maybe that’s not such a bad thing. I’d do it if I could. I know that about myself. As it is, it makes me live in the here and now. And deal with real.
I talked to my boy at 5 a.m. my time. He’s in South Africa and he and I both know in our hearts, this will probably be a lifetime thing. He belongs there. God put the fire in his belly for that place and he can’t shake it. We exchange words black and white in the chat window on Facebook and tears run unchecked down my face. Pride and and joy for him and the irony of missing him but not wanting him back because I know it’d break his heart to leave there. Sort of like heaven on earth. You can’t anticipate this feeling when you’re raising them little. You try but you can’t. And it’s hard to explain to someone how you can’t talk about it without crying. Until they feel it too.
This place, where I call home for now, matters to me. Not because I love the structure so much as the story it tells. My daddy’s heart put me here. He befriended a lonely, elderly man one day because he was always paying attention like that, and one day, months after the man died? My father discovered he’d left his house to him. My daddy lives in heaven now and wanted me to live here in this house. In my bones? I don’t think I’ll die here. But every day that goes by I look back over my shoulder to this view in my car mirror as I drive off to make my way in the world and marvel at how things go. This is a picture of grace to me; wild and unexpected.
Beatrice matters. She’s my new granddaughter. I’ve only just met her the one time so far. She lives far from me and God paid for a ticket for me to fly to see her. She was two weeks in this world. I did most of the talking. I wasn’t quite sure what to say. I told her that I loved her and that maybe we could make things with scissors and construction paper one day when her hands were bigger. And that I could tell her stories about her mama when she was little. And make her laugh. And sing to her. And pray her wings so her heart will fly in this big world.
I work at a school. I don’t hold an “important” position there. But each face that walks through the door and comes in to get a piece of candy or a hug or I look in the eye and we sit and talk? Matters. No matter how quick or how deep the conversation is, I always whisper a thank you for the encounter. This matters more deeply to me than I can sew the words together. These young faces that look up to me with more admiration than I deserve. They are salve on my heart. I remember these tender days in my own life and watch careful on their faces for signs that they need a word fitly spoken, a quiet encouragement that I’ll be thinking of them that day.
Sunrises…and sunsets….I love them like friends. They put parenthesis around my days. They hug me with hope at the beginning and comfort at the end. That He is and was and always will be. That when I don’t understand, it’s okay in a way that I don’t understand. And speaking of friends…..the ones that get me? That let me be all needy and weepy and silly and wispy and serious? The ones that seek me out and won’t let me cut bait. Those.
I love the person this shadow represents. He’s taught me, this past year, how to love in spite of, because of, instead of, through it, after it, in the middle of. He’s taught me how to give unhinged, unconditional love, with no hope of reciprocation. He’s caused me to look hard at why I give what I give. He’s given me insight into living with the hard. He’s shown me how to pray for things I may never know the outcome of. He’s made me understand the cost of loving who He brings to my hearts’ door. He’s made me cry. He’s made me hurt. He’s made me laugh in spite of myself. He’s taught me how to love anyway.
This living life each day? Can be long. This life in pictures? Can seem short. Carpe diem. No matter what.
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