What is Love?

What is love?

If your first response isn't to bob your head and sing to yourself, "Baby don't hurt me," then you obviously weren't a teenager during the late nineties munching on Twizzlers and Sour Patch Kids while slurping a Diet Dr. Pepper and watching Night at the Roxbury.

Love is, however, something more than a bad club song immortalized in an equally bad Saturday Night Live skit movie spinoff.

Love is this:

I, Tanner, choose you, Erin, to be my wife.
I promise to treasure you and take care of you,
to remain faithful to you no matter the circumstances,
to guide and protect you,
to be trustworthy and honest,
and to show you unwavering love and patient forgiveness as Christ has shown me.
All that I am and all that I have is yours, because in God’s eyes we are one until death.

I love Valentine's Day. (I told you I had some back-blogging to do, and I meant it, dern it.) It will forever be a reminder of the love I share with my husband. It will be a day that small gifts, like

roses,


foot cream (and foot rubs), chocolates, cards,



and quiet nights cozied on the couch with a glass of wine,

will remind me of BIG gifts like

the night I was told that I was a one-and-only, a treasure, a woman to be desired; and all the days and nights that came and are to come as a result of a declaration, a question, a ring, and a promise.

Valentine's Day gets a bad wrap: "It's a ploy by greeting card companies and chocolate manufacturers to suck the ever-living daylight out of your emaciated pocket book." Yeah, they (the Man) have found ways to capitalize off of Valentine's Day, but the holiday has its roots in something beautiful and pure: L-O-V-E. Not the cheap kind of mass-produced love that you can buy, but real love. One popular explanation behind the origin of Valentine's is that a third-century priest gave his life to protect and honor the covenant of marriage. That's beautiful. And while we're supposed to show love all year round, I treasure the chance to spend a day purposefully being reminded of all the ways I've been loved, and all the opportunities I have to love others.

Even if you didn't get engaged on Valentine's Day like I did, why not make it a day to remind you and your spouse of how great it is to be given the gift of love. You can do this in many ways: gifts, a romantic night out, or simply a kind word of appreciation. Whatever gives you a moment of shared joy, laughter, appreciation, and happiness.

For Tanner and I, what makes us happy and romantic is apparently breaking the tails off of mud-sucking shellfish, eating their tail flesh, and then sucking their heads.

Like I said, whatever floats your boat.

I'm linking up with Tuesday's Unwrapped @ Chatting at the Sky (a place for your soul to breath).