It is more blessed to give than to recieve

“Love is not getting, but giving…. It is goodness and honor and peace and pure living—yes, love is that and it is the best thing in the world and the thing that lives the longest. -Henry Van Dyke.

Valentine’s Day, on the one hand, is a silly and over commercialized holiday that comes once a year. On the other hand, showing love is timeless. The media would have us think Valentine’s Day is just for lovers. But, it’s so much more than that. Valentine’s Day often gives us pause and causes us to look at our relationships and focus on the people in our lives. People like sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, friends, the lonely lady down the block, a friend we’ve lost touch with, and so forth. Valentine’s Day is for everyone.

So, while it may be an over commercialized holiday, we can be quite creative and have some fun with it and spread and share the love in our hearts far and wide. All the better if we’ve retained our child’s heart to pull out upon occasions. Valentine’s Day is one occasion that’s perfect for keeping our child’s heart close by and not tucking it away just because we think we are now “mature”, so to speak.
As a hopeless romantic, and most definitely a woman child, my child’s heart can easily be tapped into and is typically readily accessible. Valentine’s Day gives me a good excuse to give away dollops of love.
This Valentine’s Day I’ve found myself making sugar Valentine cookies and then decorating them with frosting, making Valentine’s Day cards for my gaggle of girlfriends, sending a Valentine’s Day card to a recently widowed woman with a marriage of 60 years, putting together little bags of my sugar cookies in different sizes and handing out to my friends at church with little Valentine shaped cut-out pieces of paper with their names in red, and inviting a special friend for a home made “healthy waffles” brunch.

Silly serendipitous stuff, isn’t it? But, the blessing from creative giving becomes more than one can imagine when you witness the delight in the recipient’s eyes.

The gift of love and care comes right back and fills your own heart to the brim.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

What's in your water bottle

While sitting around a table the other day for a meeting, I noticed three designer water bottles congregated together and placed directly in front of the other attendees. Resembling sleek skyscrapers, one was light turquoise, one was purple and the other was a lemon yellow. A water bottle these days, like our eye glasses, has become a fashion statement. Heaven forbid we go bounding out the door for work or play with just an ordinary, run of the mill, water bottle. Today, you have to be sure that your container is a vivid color and is made from polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, before we fill it with water.

Like our water bottle that we take such care with that the materials used are of the purest plastic and non-poisonous, what do we tote out the door in our bodies every day? What is filling our tank? Beyond our own packaging, what’s inside our body that we carry out into our community?

Do we tote with us goodness and kindness? Do we leave our houses with the best of intentions to be a world class citizen or are we taking left over anger from last nights interaction with a family member, or a friend, out the front door and carrying it out into the world? Are we an instrument for peace? Do we greet our boss with a smile? Or do we bark at everyone who crosses our path?

Exhaling toxicity before we step out our door and breathing in peace and tranquility to pour into our water bottle only takes a minute. Not only does examining what’s in our water bottle lower our blood pressure but it raises our ability to be a positive voice in our day.