Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!

Today, I will celebrate this holiday with a classroom of 3rd graders, handing out Valentine's M&M's and Valentine's-themed pencils.  It's a throwback to all of those Valentine's parties from elementary school, except this time, I'm the teacher, and, if I'm being honest, I've been looking forward to it for weeks.

I can't help but take a moment to think of how different this Valentine's Day is from, well, any other I've celebrated.  Last year at this time, I was a bundle of nerves, getting ready to make dinner for AJ, who had told me he liked me a week earlier.  I knew the conversation about the future of our relationship was coming, and honestly, I had a pretty good idea of how it would turn out, but I was still nervous and anxious and giddy all at once.

But before that, Valentine's Day always started with this hope that something magical would happen, you know, straight out of a chick flick.  Guy comes to declare his love out of nowhere and sweeps girl off her feet.  They live happily ever after.  And then, inevitably, by the end of Valentine's Day, I would be met with disappointment, because, as Caroline so eloquently put it earlier this week, we don't live in a movie.

Last year's Valentine's Day ended with me watching Youtube clips of musicians like Jeremy Larson in my kitchen with AJ.  Not necessarily the gripping ending scene of the box-office buster, but, as I soon figured out, it was us, and it was perfect.  Love isn't always like the movies, and over the past year, I've found that sometimes, the most wonderful moments are found in the much-needed hug, the late-night walk, and the drive-home phone call.  And love isn't always roses and chocolates...it can be frustrating.  But it's worth it.  This past year has shown me that.

This year, it would be easy to go into this day with big romantic expectations.  But here's why I'm not:  AJ and I are both human.  We're both busy, we're both in school, and unfortunately, we both spent the weekend in bed sick.  The truth is that our Valentine's Day will likely be spent trying to get the other one to decide what we're going to have for dinner (the plight of being the most indecisive couple ever) and then watching NBC's Thursday night comedy line-up.  We've got a busy weekend ahead of us at church, and frankly, this little Thursday night routine (which is pretty much the same week-to-week), is what we both enjoy and what we probably both need this week.  We'll celebrate for real at some point, and maybe some day, when our lives and schedules are less frantic, we'll be more romantic in the traditional sense.  But I, for one, love finding the romance in the day-to-day.  In the cute text messages I often wake up to, in the songs he writes about me, in making dinner on weeknights or grabbing breakfast on Sunday mornings.  And that, my friends, I wouldn't trade for a fairy tale straight from Hollywood.