Why I love Love

**I know I'm a couple days late in posting this, but it was a busy weekend. Luckily for me, Valentine's Day isn't the only day I'm at liberty to talk about love.**

I LOVE love.

A LOT.

And all of my friends (and probably you now, too) think I'm absolutely bonkers because Valentine's Day is my *favourite* holiday. But I can't help it! 

It all has to do with how I think of the holiday, though. It has never been a romantic holiday for me, having never actually been in a relationship with someone on 14 February. Rather, I've always thought of the day as a perfect time to re-evaluate HOW I'm showing all the incredible people in my life just how much I love and appreciate them. For me it is a day of service, kindness, friendship, sacrifice and most of all Love.

Growing up my mom always made a big deal out of the day and went above and beyond to show us her love and the delight was truly in the details: 

• A special cooked breakfast (rare when you have early morning seminary!) topped off with a little Valentine gift--usually Valentine socks, a love note from my parents and a Valentine from my grandmother full of candy and a gold dollar.
• An extra special packed lunch with all the really good stuff that we rarely got to have. Of course a Valentine lunch wouldn't be complete without your sandwich cut into a heart! 
• We'd walk into the house after school to a clean house with my mom rocking out to some jazzy love songs as she presented us with our special after school snack... cookies, dirt pudding, fruit & yogurt parfaits... something that we'd never normally have and would've been a sacrifice of time on her part to make. The whole atmosphere just oozed love and joy... the kind of feelings that taught me what a home should really feel like.
• While we worked on our homework, my mom prepared a fancy family dinner. Seriously. Aside from Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day was the only other holiday where we'd have a really nice family meal in the dining room (nope, not even on Christmas!). That's when you KNOW it's a special day. It was normally steak, or something else a bit nicer than we usually couldn't afford for a family of 8. And the dessert... no matter what it was, it was ALWAYS DIVINE.

So, to sum up, Valentine's Day was basically like Thanksgiving... a family day celebrated with large amounts of delicious food, except focused on love and kindness rather than gratitude.

So now instead of Cupid, I think of Christ. 

That's why being single on Valentine's Day is really not a problem for me. It means I have much more time to devote to showing all those in my life how much I really do love them.

This year, Chloe and I combined our favourite holidays and threw a Valentine's Pancake party (today is Pancake Day). We spent the morning and afternoon with some of our closest YSA friends and we had an absolute blast. Delightful company, delicious food... who could want more?

As usual, Elder Holland gets my point across much better than I ever could:

So even though Valentine's Day is over, it's not too late to evaluate just HOW you show your love to people. Do you show it in a way they understand and interpret as love? Do you love them as the Saviour loves you? 

I submit that if every person in the world felt as loved as they really are, the world would be a much happier and peaceful place. So go spread some love today.