In search of the perfect Valentine’s Day gift

She met the perfect guy but she’s not sure what to get him for Valentine’s Day. I mean what do you get a guy who you just met but who you know you are going to marry? She asks the question loudly into her cell phone as she and I turn the corner of the Target aisle at the same time and collide. The heart-covered stuffed unicorn she is holding goes flying into the air. My boy mom reflexes kick in, though, and I manage to catch it one-handed. As I give it back to her I think, that’s probably not the message you are going for.

Of course, then I realize I’m holding a potential teacher gift coffee mug that says Happy Valentine’s Day on one side and You’re too hot to handle on the other. What? I quickly stick it back onto the shelf.

Buying presents for this holiday can be so tricky. Too forward? Too mushy? Too many sentences about love? Not enough romance? How’s a person to know what to do?

As an extremely shy fifth grader, I once made the mistake of asking out the most popular boy in the school with a misplaced Valentine Card. “Would you be mine? Check Yes or No” the card read. And straight out of an old country song, he checked YES. The most horrifying week of my life ensued. Thank goodness he eventually broke up with me because I preferred books to recess kickball.

This day we’ve declared as the “day of love” comes with a lot of potential pitfalls. And it puts so much pressure on us to do things right. Before we know it, we start to think that loving someone is about buying the right gift, choosing the right restaurant or writing the best words on the card.

So we race about buying unicorns and coffee mugs because we just don’t want to be caught empty-handed.

And the truth is this. None of us really know what we are doing. Even if we know what the perfect “I just met you but I am going to marry you gift” is we don’t know how to love someone perfectly — on Valentine’s Day or any other day. We’re all just trying to figure it out; one cheesy gift and silly card at a time.

The Bible’s definition of love is scrolled across a painting as I continue to wander the Target aslie in search of a better teacher gift.

I read the words of the familiar verse, and I am amazed at the ways I get it wrong. I don’t love like that. And the truth is, I don’t deserve God to love me like that.

But despite my flaws and my failures? He does. I read the words again.

God loves me and he loves you in all the ways that are perfectly spelled out in that verse.

He. Loves. Us. I think of the words to one of my favorite Andrew Peterson songs “Just as if we deserved it. Just as if any one of us fools was worth it. Truth is we’ll never be perfect but (He) loves us just the same. Isn’t it love?”

And here’s a truth Valentine’s Day often forgets to tell us about love. Love isn’t actually measured in stacks of good things. The piles of hard things tell its true weight. It’s tested not in days filled with chocolate and roses but in dark nights that fall suddenly and leave us with no escape plan. It’s lived out across sticky kitchen tables, around cranky kids, over stacks of bills and ankle-deep in water from another busted pipe.

Love takes out the garbage, does the dishes, says dinner’s delicious when the whole thing is charred black. Love makes the coffee, remembers to switch the laundry and fixes the leaky sink a hundred times over.

Love hangs out in the ordinary and the everyday. It’s as happy in flip-flops and jeans as in high heels and sequins. But it will always be worth more than the most extraordinary gift you could buy.

And God knows this. It’s why he loves us like he does. It’s why love is the only thing that lasts. Faith, hope, and love remain. But the greatest of these? The greatest of these is love.

And I wonder how to repay that kind of love. I cannot give back enough to be worth it.

I know, God whispers.

And it’s this verse from Romans that comes to me. In the Message, Eugene Peterson writes it like this. “So here’s what I want you to do. Take your everyday ordinary life — your sleeping, eating, going to work and walking around life — and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.” (Romans 12:1)

The best gift you can give God? Your ordinary life; the one you are walking around in right now. And maybe it’s the best gift we can give those we love, too. Our days, our hours, our eyes, our words, our full attention in the middle of the mundane crazy days. The gift of ourselves present with them in it all.

Don’t worry, though, you can still buy the unicorn, hand out the cards and eat the all the chocolate. In fact, have a deliriously Happy Valentine’s Day.

Because here’s the real gift.

You and me and your husband, your wife, your best friend, your gaggle of kids, your neighbor and even that guy you just met who’s the perfect match, we are all loved by a God who crossed heaven and earth to come spend these ordinary days with us. May we never get over what an extraordinary gift that truly is.

Alleluia! Amen! And Happy Valentine’s Day.