Valentines day!

Hello friends!

Last night one of my best friends, Emily and her sister Sarah, hosted a "Galentines" Day party. It was so fun. It was just girls and was a great time for fellowship and food. Emily made a delicious and pretty healthy Mexican casserole and we laughed so hard and just enjoyed each others company. It was great and the pic above is from last night.

I LOVE valentines day and here is why....It is the birthday of two of my favorite friends of all time, Priscilla Petsch and Matt Copple. So I love it for that. But other wise I hate it. And here is why...

I just struggle with the false image that the media and the world give love. I am not the angry single person saying these things. I am happily married for 3 and a half years to an amazing man who I love and adore and will spend my valentines with. BUT, valentines day even sets us up for failure. It paints a picture of a love that cannot be. It paints a picture of a wildly romantic couple who can't get enough of each other, never fights, never has financial struggles, never deals with addiction, never slams the door in the other ones faces...this couple lives in rainbows and sparkles all the time. And this couple does not exist. I promise I am not writing this because Andrew and I are in a bad place. We are great. But we are not this couple I'm talking about. We get pissed at each other. We get selfish with our time and our things. We seek our own good before that of the other...and we do this because we are sinners. We are broken filthy selfish sinners. And when two sinners are bound together through the bond of marriage, a perfect couple does not emerge covered in roses and rainbows. A broken filthy couple emerges in desperate need of a savior. In desperate need of a rescuer to teach them how to love the other. If look at how that relationship is, it's hard and yucky. But real and redeemed by one who created LOVE. By one who laid down his own life so we might live. And that process was horrifying. It was awful. It was scary and off putting. But that is love. So I write all of this as a reminder to all of us, that the picture our "world" portrays as love is a lie. True love lies in the arms of a savior, who gave us garments of praise and in return took our spirit of heaviness. All glory and praise to Him who is our love.