When it’s all been said and done—when we’ve sent that most important of all our Valentine’s cards, when that love letter with a heart drawn in the margin has been signed, sealed, and delivered, when that box of chocolates from the drugstore has been wrapped—what we really want on this Day is that somebody knows how special they are to us.
And we want to feel the same; we want to know we are loved by someone, too.
Deep down, whether we are willing to acknowledge it, we want to know we mean something to someone.
In sixth grade, it was Diane McDaniel.
At Washington Elementary School in Altus, Oklahoma, the teacher (Ms. Peach, the young and attractive student teacher that year) distributed white sacks with instructions to decorate them with our artwork. We were to hang them along the wall, and then each student was to place a homemade Valentine’s card for each of the other students. So, everyone was to give and receive a Valentine. Had I been savvy, I would have persuaded someone with a modicum of artistic talent to decorate mine. I had little to no artistic inclinations. My stick figures and drawing of a Valentine were akin to prehistoric cave etchings.
None of that blunted my desire to give and receive Valentine’s. But especially from Diane. Each school day, we sixth graders were allowed to peek into our little Valentine sacks to see if someone had placed their decorated Valentine in ours. Excitement built in our little six-grade lives until it was Valentine’s Day, and we could claim our sacks, bring them to our desks, and read them one by one.
Watching for Diane’s reaction, I noticed a coy smile, a promising sign. Did she know I liked her? I watched for a glance my way or even maybe, dream on: a wink.
And I read hers, which was, much to my disappointment, quite generic. There was no “You are my special Valentine, dearest David,” as I had envisioned, only a forthright “Happy Valentine’s, David.” At least she wrote my name, which I read several times, as if I were a handwriting analyst for the CIA, even tracing my fingers on the handwriting: “Happy Valentine’s, David.” I read it several times, trying to decipher a hidden love message somewhere between the lines.
There was none; I finally resigned myself to the truth.
As the student teacher walked up and down the aisles of our desks, she paused at mine and then, coming to a full stop, patted me on my shoulder.
I will never know if Ms. Peach’s gesture was a compassionate act of consolation or an unconscious and random affirmation to one of her students. But her simple act gave me hope not to give up.
The youthful and attractive teacher must understand, I concluded. And so, sixth-grade budding paramour that I was, I kept on and read with relish all the cards my schoolmates had given me. And I still kept an eye on Diane.
As the years passed, my classmates and I grew more sophisticated in our Valentine’s Day celebrations, and our awareness of love and what it means to love blossomed.
But no matter our age, the desire for love remains in all of us, even if hidden beneath the bruises of spurned loves and the unconscious defenses we erect to protect ourselves from its disappointments. Whether it’s Valentine’s Day or not, we want to love and be loved by someone special.
That longing—met with pain and joy at different stages of our romantic journeys, finds its ultimate and irrevocable apotheosis in a true love that is wider, deeper, and more encompassing than anything like our sporadic romances—in Jesus of Nazareth. His love for us, expressed in His coming to us, wooing us in a relationship cemented by his sacrificial death for us, fulfilling our deepest longings to be that special person in a love relationship that will never let us go, finds us, forsaken perhaps by others, in this One who pats us on the shoulder, in every disappointment, and in so doing, continually claims us as His own not just on Valentine’s Day, but every day in a love that never ends.
Amen and amen!