Into the Fire

When I was in 6th grade, I received two or three giant Valentine boxes of candy from secret admirers on my desk at school. I mean the great big heart-shaped ones. One of them was a yellow box with a pretty flower on it. I think it stands out in my memory because yellow has always been my favorite color (black was added later, probably after life's bumps and bruises). I never found out who gave them to me.

I'm a "card" person. Hallmark, American Greetings, Leanin' Tree–doesn't matter. I think I got this inclination from my dad who always bought his family cards for every occasion. It takes time to find the just-right card for a person. The cards I've chosen have been known to produce a few tears in my husband's eyes (sshhh!) or have elicited belly laughs from friends. I've also stood in the aisle of a Hallmark shop and burst out laughing myself from some very clever card-smiths. Good cards really do say so much.

When I was a kid, girls still had to wear skirts/dresses to school. So a few of us girls wore shorts under our skirts so we could do cartwheels on the playground at recess.

In 6th grade I went steady with a boy by wearing a ring he gave me around my neck on a chain. We rarely saw each other even at school because we didn't have any classes together. We simply talked on the telephone, but it seems there were a lot of silent moments in our conversations. Funny . . .

My special gift? This humbling, total blessing for which I am so grateful. It came on a day when I was wrecked in the writing ditch, crashed by thoughts and needing the jaws of life to pull me out of maybe giving up. You know how we always talk about God's timing . . . Well, this was His perfection:

http://http://christian-critic.blogspot.com/2010/02/famous-one-nicole-petrino-salter.html#comments

Happy Valentine's Weekend. Remember: God Is Love.