Valentine's Day Archives - Kristen Anne Glover

Cherished

Cherished

All I ever wanted for Valentine’s Day was the one thing he could never give me. I wanted to feel completely loved and cherished, but my husband always fell short in that department. He wasn’t the kind of guy who bought flowers or gushed sentiment.

On the good days, I thought he enjoyed my company. I could be cute, sometimes, and funny. I made good deserts and edited his papers.

But other days, I wondered if he even liked me. I could be bristly, irritable, and unlovely. The deeper into love I got, the more broken I found myself to be. I couldn’t hold on to affection or warmth or tenderness—it all seemed to run out through my cracks.

Somewhere along the road, I’d been dropped a few too many times. I had learned what no one ever intended to teach me: I was not worth holding on to. I was replaceable. Forgettable. Only worthwhile as long as I was perfect and pretty, compliant and amusing, holy and willing.

When I couldn’t be all of that, well, people let go.

And I shattered.

Because I knew I was rarely perfect and hardly ever holy. Truth be told, I wasn’t even funny. I only pretended to be so I could keep people far enough away to where they couldn’t hurt me.

If I had to be all those things, who could ever love me? I learned to keep part of myself back—the part that really mattered—so when someone let go, not all of me fell.

Only, I didn’t really know it until a boy tried to love me and couldn’t. He tried to love me when I was loveable, and I wondered if I could keep it up. He tried to love me when I was un-lovely, and I didn’t believe him. He tried to be my constant, only the more constant he was, the less worthy I felt, and the more sure I was that I would mess it up.

Some nights, when sleep wouldn’t come, I would look at him and wonder if his next wife would be better. After I was dead and gone, she would love him more. She would make him happy to come home. She would make up for all these wasted years with a crazy wife who probably needed medication.

Yet all that time, I cried inside because I wanted to be that wife myself, and I couldn’t. I wanted to be the cherished one. I wanted to be the one who made his life sweet and beautiful. I wanted to be his partner, encourager, supporter—but I couldn’t seem to patch myself up long enough to hold the love it would take to be so lovely.

The truth was, love made me more uncomfortable than just about anything else in the world. I couldn’t control it, couldn’t hide from it, couldn’t keep it where it belonged. Love was wild and bold and pursuing. It overlooked brokenness and brought out beauty. I didn’t deserve that, and I knew it.

What’s more, I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe anyone could overlook my flaws for long. I didn’t believe my husband could. Or my children. Or even God.

Not really.

I longed to feel cherished, but I was utterly unable to accept it. A person could wear himself out with the pouring, and I would only feel a drop of it. He could be utterly doting, head-over-heels in love, and hopelessly romantic, and it would not be enough.

The deeper into love I got, the more broken I found myself to be.

But love is relentless. And sometimes, God uses a husband’s love to soften the cracked ground so the Father’s love can soak in.

My husband did not go away.

He did not love me only when I was lovely.

He did not withdraw his love from me when I wasn’t.

So why didn’t I feel it? Why didn’t I feel cherished by a husband who cherished me?

I began to look into my heart, and the cracks began to show: I did not feel loved by my husband because I did not feel loved by God. That is something a good Christian girl was supposed to learn, and young, but I was busy learning other things.

I understood Jesus loved me enough to die for me because if there was one thing knew, it was that I was a sinner. But to understand the depth of the Father’s love, the kind of love that chose to love me in my unloveliness? That was something I simply couldn’t grasp.

And because I could not understand God’s love, I could not accept my husband’s. My husband could never love me enough.

Only God could do that.

Only God did do that.

I had been expecting my husband to meet a need in me that was never his to meet. I did not feel cherished by him because I did not understand that I was treasured by God. The deep longing in me to feel like I was worth something could never be met in the husband who married me unless it was first met in the Christ who purchased me.

That purchase had nothing to do with my worthiness or loveliness or holiness, even though I kept trying to make it so. He chose to set his affection upon me knowing full well that I was broken and wretched, unholy and imperfect. He even knew that most of his love would be wasted on me, and he loved me all the same.

There was no need to hide from that kind of love. He already knew me. He knew I wasn’t really funny, couldn’t stay pretty, and was cranky without coffee. And he decided to love me anyway. God chose to love me.

If God chose to love me, could I ever make him un-love me? Was there anything I could do to make him change his mind?

Never.

In spite of my brokenness, he would never go away.

He would not drop me when I failed.

He would not replace me with someone more lovely.

He could not because he chose not.

It was the very thing I had wanted all along, but couldn’t see that I had. I was completely accepted and loved.

I was cherished

When I understood God’s love for me and was secure in the know that I could not change it, no matter what I did, I could finally begin to see and accept that I was also loved by the man who had chosen me. All those years, when the love poured out through my cracks, and he could not make me feel loved enough, I was already chosen and loved beyond my wildest dreams.

I was cherished.

Save the Broken Books!

If you are a parent, you have undoubtedly come upon a crime scene like this:

Oh, the carnage!

The victim: A perfectly good book

The perpetrator: Chubby Hands

The crime: Shredding pages when Mom thinks Chubby Hands is sleeping

It’s hard to know what to do with books once they’ve been victimized. Tape? Staples? Sometimes that’s the best way to go. But we have some books in our library that have been taped so many times, they resemble a collection of Egyptian mummies. Any reasonable person would throw those books away.

But I’m a bibliophile, and I can’t stand throwing away books, especially since the most abused books in our library are my favorites.

So instead of throwing out those beloved books, I turned them into magnets! Every day, I get to enjoy these little reminders of the many sweet times I’ve spent reading to my children. That’s much better than tossing them in the trash!

Guess How Much I Love You? I love you so much I can’t throw you away.

Here’s what you need:

1 ruined book (The Very Hungry Caterpillar makes darling magnets!)

1 (or more) packages of bubble magnets (see below)

Modge Podge (you can buy it at the craft store or make your own using equal parts Elmer’s and water)

Scissors or a 1″ paper punch

Craft glue or a hot glue gun

Here’s what you do:

The process is very simple. I picked up a couple packages of bubble magnets at Staples for about $1.99 each. You can get the clear plastic bubbles at the craft store, but they’re way more expensive and don’t include the magnets!

Staples magnets=cheap and effective

It is very easy to peel the magnets apart and remove the previous graphic.

Using the magnet, find images or words from the book that you’d like to magnify under the bubble and trace it with a pencil. Cut it out with a sharp scissors. If you have a 1″ punch, you could use that to punch out the images instead, but the punches don’t work on board books.

Brush modge podge on the underside of the bubble

Brush modge podge on the underside of the acrylic bubble, being careful not to get it on your fingers or on the top of the bubble. Place your circle cutout face-down into the goop and flip it back over onto some aluminum foil or parchment paper. You should be looking at your image under the plastic bubble! Press out any air pockets and continue with the rest of the circles until you are finished.

Modge podged and ready to dry!

Double check to make sure you didn’t get any modge podge on the tops of the bubbles. If you did, wipe it off with a damp sponge. Double check for air bubbles as well, and then use a heavy book to weigh down the tops of the magnets while they dry. This may take several hours.

Once dry, glue the magnets to the back of the bubbles using a hot glue gun or heavy-duty craft glue. Allow to dry completely.

That’s it. You’re done! Aren’t they adorable? I love them so much, I actually look for broken books at thrift stores. They make great gifts for baby or bridal showers, teacher appreciation gifts, or even a travel tic-tac-toe game for the kids (just use two different books for the pieces and a metal tin to serve as both the game board AND storage container). Have fun!

Book magnets make a great Valentine’s Day or teacher appreciation gift!

The Rules

I’d like to pretend it was a day when I had been bombarded with unusual inconveniences and unruly behavior from my children. But it wasn’t. I’d like to pretend that I had suffered through the day and my behavior was justified. But it wasn’t. I’d like to pretend that I was sick or tired or under a great deal of stress. But I wasn’t.

Truth be told, it was just an ordinary day, filled with nothing more than minor irritations. A child spilled her milk, another took his brother’s toy. Someone threw a temper tantrum. No one got a nap.

But for some reason, it did not feel like an ordinary day. It felt personal, like every little irritation or inconvenience was aimed directly at me. I could not stand to hear one more whining tone, or listen to one more argument. I did not want to determine who had what first, or tell someone to stop doing something to someone else. I did not want to clean up one more spill or get one more person something he couldn’t reach himself or remind one more child of the rules.

It didn’t seem like anyone was remembering the rules, even though they were the same rules we’ve had in this house since the dawn of time. So I was astonished, simply astonished, to find my seven-year-old sitting in the living room with my sharpest pair of scissors in his hand, the scissors he’s not supposed to touch without asking, the scissors he’s never, never to use except at the table.

“What are you doing?” I exclaimed as I came over to him.

I looked down and saw him sitting on the carpet in a pile of red shards. He was holding one of my new folders in his hand. It had been cut to bits.

“What are you DOING?!” I said in a much louder tone.

He looked up at me, but no words came out of his mouth. I couldn’t believe he was sitting in my living room cutting up my folder with a pair of scissors he was not supposed to use—ever.

“You’re cutting up my folder?!” I was shouting now. I would like to believe I was simply speaking sternly. But I wasn’t.

“You’re using my good scissors to cut up my folder! I can’t believe you’re doing this! You know better!”

“Mom, I…” he began.

I didn’t want to hear it. There was nothing he could say that would make it any better. He knew the rules, and he had disobeyed. He had taken something of mine without asking, and he had destroyed it. I was in utter disbelief.

“Go to bed,” I demanded. He put his head down and headed for the stairs before the tears began to flow.

I got the rest of the children to bed. No stories. No cuddles. Mommy was not in the mood. I came downstairs and looked at the pile of red on my carpet. I couldn’t even stand to see it. I turned off the light and went to bed myself.

In the morning, that pile of paper was still there. I fully intended to make my son clean it up himself. But I wanted to put the scissors away before the twins woke up and used it to cut their hair. Or worse. That’s why we have rules about scissors, I thought, remembering the time my son cut his hair down to the scalp and spent the rest of the summer looking like a holocaust victim.

I picked up the scissors. Something caught my eye. It was a heart, crudely fashioned out of red. Then I saw another. And another. Three little red hearts made out of my red folder were stacked up on the floor. They had scribbles all over the backs, but the biggest one was decorated on the front with washable Crayola. “I Love you,” it said in second-grader handwriting.

I felt the sob in my throat. And I cried.

I cried because I had forgotten the rule, the greater rule, the rule about love and kindness and believing the best about my son when all the evidence was against him. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”[1]

Love is everything I had not been to my son. I called Jonathan upstairs. “Look what I found,” I said, not really knowing how to begin.

He nodded. “Yep. I made those for you because the boys scribbled on your folder, and I thought that since they had ruined it, I would make you feel better.”

I didn’t think I could feel any worse. “Oh, Jonathan,” I said, squeezing him to me. “I’m so sorry.”

He nodded again and smiled, but he had tears in his eyes. We sat and hugged for a long time, both of us thinking about how much better it is when love reigns.

“Let’s put this up on the fridge,” I said, taking the biggest heart. We stood back and looked at it up there. “It’s good to be reminded of the rules, isn’t it?”

“Yep,” he said. “Love is always a good rule.”

“Yes, it is. It’s the greatest.”

[1] I Cor 13:4-7, NIV