Valentine’s Day is a unique holiday in that it is uniquely polarizing. For some, it’s a day where we can truly celebrate the loves with which we’ve been blessed, full mush-factor. For others, however, it falls into a more materialistic “greeting card” category of celebration: an excuse, if you will, to truly cherish that love seemingly only for a single calendar day.
Now we are, as ever, in the business of love, and to do anything less than wholeheartedly celebrate it would be a disservice to the heart of our existence! Still, Valentine’s Day should never be an excuse to truly and intentionally love one another on that day alone—because, you see, if that were the case, then it wouldn’t really be love at all. True love is a muscle you exercise daily. It’s an ever-present state of being which grows with every use and action, it knows nothing of time, or distance, or hardship; love is blind to all but the heart can see, and endures with a persistence that surpasses energy itself. Love is, quite simply, the greatest force in the universe.
And sometimes… we forget that.
The world has a funny way of painting beauty with malice and convincing us that it never existed in the first place. It tells us that love is easy, that it simply is, and sometimes—when life happens, when circumstance devastates the nations of our substance—it tells us that love isn’t even worth it. Suddenly goodness and kindness, grace and tenderness, they are all found wanting beneath a mountain of dissatisfaction and failed expectation. But the truth is, love is work; it’s a choice. It’s daily putting to rest the desires of self and sacrificing them before the needs of another. It’s talking, and crying, and holding, and leaning, and coming to the very edge of yourself to find you have the most beautiful war-torn company waiting there with you. Love is magic forged in fire.
So on this fine Valentine’s, I propose that you do one thing: love. In balloons or cards or chocolates, in tenderest vulnerability, in kind gestures and pure grit, in silent moments of sweetest existence, in long walks and loveliest words—love. And tomorrow, love. And the next day, love. And the day after that, love. And never stop, not once… not ever.
Just love.
photography: Live View Studios / venue: Barn at Reynolda Village / styling: Michelle Wright Events / hair & makeup: Michelle Clark / calligraphy: Silver Fox Calligraphy / dress: Alexandra Grecco / bridal boutique: Gilded Bridal / robe: Girl and A Serious Dream / decor: Greenhouse Picker Sisters / rings: Trumpet & Horn / film processing: The FIND Lab
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