It’s Sunday evening and I’m laying on the couch with a puppy asleep on either side of me (Cuddles on my left, Snuggles on my right, not that you care, but of course I do).  I’m on bed rest as I work to fight off mono, but I’ll tell you more about that later, maybe tomorrow if I feel like writing.  Tonight I want to talk about the heart because, after all, it is Valentine’s Day.  I don’t want it to pass by without me.

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I have mixed feelings about Valentine’s Day.  There’s a big part of me that thinks it’s simply a money-making holiday supplied by florists, card shops and jewelry stores.  And, as one of my friends mentioned to me earlier, for some people, this is the only holiday with the ability to make them feel singled out: the singles in the world.  Some singles don’t mind today; others will cry themselves to sleep tonight.

It’s so interesting that one holiday can bring out so many different emotions and reactions, isn’t it?

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For the last couple of weeks, our local radio stations have been carrying an ad for a party that’s happening at a nearby club in honor of Valentine’s Day.  They’re calling it “Bitter Ball” and the idea is that people will bring their memorabilia from past lovers — cards, pictures, etc. — and put them in a giant shredding machine that will be inside the club.  In essence, they’ll “shred their ex” one memory at a time.

I haven’t dated a lot over the years.  There were those middle school / high school crushes that felt very real and then, in college, another two or three relationships scattered between mid-terms and final exams.  After I finished grad school, there were two relationships that came along (neither of which I blogged about during their duration) that I thought might actually have long-term potential; obviously, they didn’t.  I’m not being sarcastic; I’m just being matter-of-fact.  They just didn’t work out.

I’ve been thinking lately about how differently I feel about being in a relationship or even the fact that I’m not in a relationship.  Wanting to be with someone has been such a huge theme in my life for so long that it’s almost shocking to see how differently I feel about it now.  In the past, Valentine’s Days spent alone have been very long days, punctuated with the hope that maybe by the next Valentine’s Day, I wouldn’t be alone.

I vividly remember last Valentine’s Day, Cate and I getting dressed in her bedroom, fixing our hair in her bathroom.  We went contra dancing and we danced for hours. I wore a black dress, pinned my hair up and went to bed that night for the first time in a long time feeling okay about being single.  Of course, at the time there was a potential relationship looming in the distance, so I wasn’t too worried.  When you have options, you don’t worry too much about the future.

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But what about when you don’t have any options left?  A few weeks ago, I felt the Lord gently ask me to begin cutting some ties that I had held onto from past relationships.  There were phone numbers that shouldn’t still be in my cell phone, letters that I didn’t need to save anymore.  I had kept emails — just in case, of course — and photographs, too.  There was — is — no chance of those relationships reconnecting (nor do I wish that there was).  But I had kept little pieces of each of them, maybe for reasons I didn’t even understand at the time.  I guess I just wanted them in case I forgot that I had been loved, that those times had happened.

Some items were easier to get rid of than others.  But evening after slow evening, they were eventually all gone.

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I’m tired now.  It’s taken me almost three hours to write this much, which is probably the best indicator I can give as to how this mono has quite literally knocked me flat on my back physically and mentally.  I’m running a fever tonight, again.  So, instead of trying to type out everything else I wanted to say, let me just say this.

Earlier tonight, before I started writing this, I had tears in my eyes because I was thinking about how grateful I am that God knows. He knows exactly where I am right now, where I live, how badly my throat hurts tonight.  He knows that I want to be loved but He knows that I want Him more.  He knows who I’ve loved, how I’ve loved, when I will love again.

And somehow  — and I don’t quite know how He’s done it because it’s a miracle I thought might never happen — He’s made it okay that I’m not in a relationship.  Somewhere during the days and nights, some moment when I wasn’t even aware it was happening, it became okay.  It became okay to let go of that one’s letters, to take the other one’s number out my cell phone.  It became okay to say “I have nothing left to hold onto but You.”  It became okay that it’s Valentine’s night and I’m home alone tonight, that I am not someone’s valentine.  It just became okay.  It doesn’t mean I want to be single forever.  All I want now is to be what He wants right here, right now.  I want to be nothing more than what I’m supposed to be right now, not what I’ve been and not what I’ll be in the future.

It just became okay because He knows.  And because I am convinced that He loves me.

Now, for bed.  It’s my favorite place these days.