My Sweet Bride,
I am so thankful to be your Valentine. You know that I love you very much and I know that I don’t romance you as much as I did when we were dating, engaged, or even first married. It becomes easier and easier to take for granted the life I have with you and the gift that it was from God. In the past I was not deserving of a person like you but God somehow saw it fit to rock my world with your person.
I wanted to do something nice for you on Valentine’s day but I thought you were worth way more than $35 flowers (you see what I did there?). Really, though, flowers can’t help me adequately express how I feel about you. However, the true meaning of Valentine’s day, based on the heroic life of St. Valentine, can.
St. Valentine was a Priest who lived in a time when polygamy was likely more popular than the union between one man and one woman and marriage was under heavy attack. In fact, because of the emperor at the time, Claudius II, it was illegal for young people to marry because he believed that men would make better soldiers if they were not preoccupied with a family.
St. Valentine believed so much in the importance of marriage he defied the emperor and performed secret marriage ceremony’s in the Church until he was caught. After he was caught it is believed that healed the daughter of one of his judges. She was blind and he restored her sight. He was then beaten, stoned and then beheaded for performing Church marriages. His last words, written in a letter to the blind girl whom he had healed, were “from your Valentine”.
The name Valentine derives from the latin “valens” which means powerful, strong, or worthy.
St. Valentine believed so much in the marriage of man and woman that he was willing to give up his life to protect it. His witness has echoed throughout history and we celebrate it almost two thousand years later. He believed his marriage was worth dying for and so do I.
On this day I want to show you my love by emulating the example of St. Valentine. I am renewing my promise to you that I believe in our marriage so much that I am willing to sacrifice everything for it.
If to be your Valentine means being willing to give my life to protect our marriage than instead of asking you to be my Valentine, please… let me be your Valentine.
– from your Valentine
Update: I called in to a radio show (More 2 Life with Greg and Lisa Popcack) and gave a small tribute to my bride. Listen to it below.
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