Valentines Day is one of my favorite holidays.
I love Valentines not because of it's commercialized meaning, but because of what we have turned it into over the years.
Valentines Day for us, means a month-long celebration of Ephesians 5__
Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.
Under the farmhouse roof, we spend a month soaking up God's extravagant love for us. Each night the Cowboy and I write notes to each of the kids and put them in their mailboxes. And each morning the kids run down the stairs and read their notes out loud to one another. I mean who wouldn't love to hear every morning for a month straight, all the ways in which the Lord is at work in them & all the things that someone they love, loves about them?
Under the farmhouse roof, one of our greatest desires is to make souls stronger__ to speak words that build up and give life. And so we take a month each year to speak into our kid's hearts. We tell them the gifts that we see in them. We thank them for the many ways that they help. We affirm the positive ways that they love on their siblings and how they honor their Mama and Papa.
It's a month of blessing for both them and us. It blesses the Cowboy and I because it gives us an opportunity to talk about the ways that the Lord is working in each of our kids. It opens our eyes to things we sometimes miss simply because in the daily grind of life with many small treasures, it can be easier to get caught up in the ways they're struggling rather than encouraging in the ways that the Lord really is working in them. It blesses them because, well, reading stuff that's awesome about yourself everyday for a month, just plain makes you smile.
Then today, we had our annual "We Love Love" party. It was a blast. We started having these parties when our oldest two were tiny little lads. As our kids have grown, we've changed things up a bit and have had to learn ways to host parties for kids of all different ages. It can be a challenge to make it fun for toddlers and tweens. But today we had a blast playing a bunch of silly "Minute To Win It" games, and this time even the Mamas jumped into the fun.
At today's party, before we ate all that yummy food, I shared with all the Mamas there, the reasons why we were there. And I may have gotten a little teary-eyed as I shared with them about our God and the mind-boggling ways that He loves us. Christ''s extravagant love for us is so worth having a big ole-shindig!
Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us.
I wanna love like that, everyday of the year.
