What Sugar and New Love Have In Common

Oh Valentine’s Day!

You’re the big, red and white, and pink, and chocolate and sugar-coated, nauseatingly syrupy sweet elephant in the room. You are acknowledged.

Each year Valentine’s Day comes around, I can’t help but wonder if all the over-indulgence and the over-the-top displays of love are nothing more than a small, commercialized (now read: for the gram) bandaid laying on top of gaping wounds and hemorrhaging hearts.

Oh, LOVE, especially new love it’s “intoxicating and it lifts us to unimagined euphoric heights” to use Danny’s words. And in that sense, new love is a lot like sugar.

Euphoric heights. Bursts of energy. It’s like you’ve come alive to the world around you, and you may even think - This. Is. Happiness. (Me, every time I bite into a cookies’n’creme chocolate bar).

But then comes the inevitable crash.

The reality that you cannot nourish your body on sugar alone.

The reality that new love must make the transition to seasoned love—love that has faced the tests of time and the challenges that come with it and yet still survives—or be declared no love at all.

Sometimes there are holes in our relationships, especially our relationship with our significant other. After all, they are the ones who see us at our best and worst.

Even small holes can become vast if they are not recognized and then tended to.

But then comes Valentine’s Day with its lavish gifts and overpriced romantic dinners, and many flock to it with the hope that the day’s trimmings will fill the void gnawing at the pit of their stomach. But Valentine’s day can only be a bandaid to an open wound that needs stitches and a bandage, and some holes even require surgery.

Valentine’s day, like every other day, will come and go. And then what?

(Candy and stuffed animals will be 50% off that’s what! LOL)

But seriously, what about the state of your relationships then?

How well are you loving the people around you?

Beginning with the people in your home, especially your self?

How well are you loving yourself? Here's a sure way of knowing, is your self-talk positive or negative? If it's negative you can do a better job of loving yourself.

If you're married and/or have children, how well are you loving your spouse and your children?

Married or not, how well are you loving your neighbor?

And do you know love at all?

Do you know GOD? And how well are you loving Him? The one who loved you enough to give you life. The one who loved you so much that He gave His only Son not only to be born as a man so He could enter into the human experience, but to die a most brutal death—"was not bone separated from joint…skin separated from flesh bone…blood separated from organs..life separated from breath" (From Danny, on “The Pain I Feel”)—and not only to die but to be raised to life again with all power. A power that His Word says can be at work within us too if we believe in Him (Romans 8:11 + Ephesians 1:19).

New love, like a new year, will eventually lose its "new car smell." (Shoutout to husband for that one too! )

The freshness will fade. The luster will lessen. It will be sullied and tainted by our flawed humanity—our shortcomings and our imperfections. But even old cars can be washed, cleaned, detailed, serviced and maintained to look, and run, as good as new. It just requires time and dedication.

Love should be celebrated and demonstrated to those around us each day, especially the people we encounter every day, starting with ourselves and our own households.

This Valentine's Day, and beyond, give God the gift of more of you, gift yourself with a little more kindness and a little more grace, gift your spouse and your children with more of your undivided attention and with your patience, and gift the world with service—in the way that only you can do it.

And remember love conquers all.

HINT: GOD is love!