Unexpected Valentines

Of flowers and doorstep visits and handwritten notes of hope

What flowers and handwritten notes and love can do. Photo from Pixabay.

Charles stood at my back door, flowers quivering in his hands. Tears ran down his lined face.

It was a bright day in early May of 2005, the sunshine pouring down upon the vivid grass, the sky a brilliant, blissful blue. It didn’t match my feelings that day, though. My husband Jon and I, married not quite a year, had found out we were expecting a baby. Soon after, I started bleeding. We saw our baby on an ultrasound, the heartbeat an unmistakable bright flash. We were giddy with relief, and my doctor prescribed bed rest. After another ultrasound and consultation, we learned that a blood clot was in my uterus. The baby wasn’t going to live. Within hours, I miscarried. Our pastor told our church family. And now Charles stood outside our door.

“Why, Charles,” I said. “Hello.”

He took a breath, his lip moving, but nothing came out. Finally, he choked quietly, “I’m sorry.” And then I cried, too.

I cried because I was grieving, more deeply than I had ever known grief before. But mostly, I cried because Charles was showing me love. He wasn’t smooth or well-versed. He was awkward, and he could barely say anything. But he showed up, and he was sad with me.

I hadn’t realized before that time how hard it can be to go to someone who has lost a beloved soul, to join them viscerally in their sorrow. Charles was being a Christian brother. He was old enough to be my father. He wasn’t married himself, and he had no children of his own. He had some mental challenges that he gamely shouldered. But Charles knew that grief is heavy and hard, and it should be shared. We cried together, both of us weeping. I gave him a hug, there in the sweet spring air, and thanked him for coming. He gave me the flowers. We spoke quietly of the hope of Christ’s resurrection. I hugged him again, and then he left.

All of us have memories of these kinds of sacrificial gifts from others. They’re usually small in the whole scheme of things, but they loom large in our hearts. It could be a care package or a pay-it-forward at the coffee shop. It could be the woman who holds your crying baby on the plane because you’re at your wits’ end. It could be the man who pulls over to ask if you need help on the shoulder when your flashers are on. Anyone with loving church family has probably received food at a time of stress or sorrow—what I like to say is a particularly Lutheran love language. There is no cold, no cancer, no horrific tragedy or grief that can turn away homey hot dishes, stockpots of soup, baskets of bread, or Cool-Whip containers of cookies messily slathered with icing. When our son Christian died in utero three years ago, church family at an informal memorial for him hosted the biggest potluck I’ve ever seen—at least six full-length tables absolutely crammed with salads and casseroles and sweets. Just thinking about all of those dishes, and all of those people and all of their love, makes me want to cry grateful tears all over again.

The same goes for handwritten notes. From “Happy Birthday”s to “You’re in my prayers” to “Our condolences,” believers gift their caring to others using simple words on paper or cards, in plain or colored envelopes. I can’t seem to let go of the most poignant ones, the ones from people whom I know suffered a lot themselves, yet still offered love and support. Mostly, they repeated the Truth: God loves you. He never leaves you. Christ died for you and rose again, and His resurrection is yours and your children’s, too. I think of these lines especially now, on the eve of St. Valentine’s Day.

The Treasury of Daily Prayer explains what we remember about Valentine, a Christian martyr, in this way.

A physician and priest living in Rome during the rule of Emperor Claudius, Valentine became one of the noted martyrs of the third century. The commemoration of his death, which occurred in AD 270, became part of the calendar of remembrance in the Early Church of the West. Tradition suggests that on the day of his execution for his Christian faith, Valentine left a note of encouragement for a child of his jailer written on an irregularly shaped piece of paper. This greeting became a pattern for millions of written expressions of love and caring that now are the highlight of Valentine’s Day in many nations.

An old man with a piece of paper: St. Valentine. From Wikimedia Commons.

I love that a scrawled note to a child, of all people, has been remembered in the Christian church as worthy of praise and emulation. So often we think of martyrs as particularly holy people. And they were and are, but not completely in the way we think, I suspect. They were believers who confessed Christ even unto death. But they did not begin their confessions at their moments of death. The Holy Spirit had worked through them in small ways, maybe hundreds or thousands of ways, most of which they probably never recognized as anything special. They just lived what had been placed in them, because faith works in believers. The fancy word for this is sanctification, which means that once God grants faith to a person, he can’t help but love his neighbor. It just happens. And for Valentine, it happened just before he died for confessing Jesus.

Several weeks ago, Jon and I received an email from school about one of our sons. I automatically cringed, opening the email, because typically the updates from our headmaster about this son are about missing homework and things of that ilk. But I was surprised at the contents. “I was grading sonnets that Sam's English class wrote, and I had to send his to you,” Pastor Richard wrote. “You'll love it.”

This is the sonnet.

Upon my brother, that I never knew

I lay and think, for minutes every night

If he would like the toys that I like too.

I’d see if I could help him fly a kite

I’d put him in his bed, turn off the light

and teach him many prayers before his sleep.

But even though I wish with all my might,

the God who lives in heaven will him keep.

I’ll wish until bleak death himself doth creep

to steal my life. But then I will have won!

My brother is in heaven. I can’t weep.

For now I know that death’s dark reign is done.

So quickly shall I pass these many years

for now I’ve found a way to stop these tears.

I did love it, and do. His sonnet was an unexpected valentine to us, about his always baby brother Christian, sleeping in the earth until Christ comes again. This is what valentines are and should be; they are loving reminders of what Christ has promised to give His people. I promised Sam that I wouldn’t share a picture here of his scrawled pencil script on college-ruled paper. But what he wrote, and what so many people have done for others, gives us hope. We all need encouragement in trusting in the Lord’s promises. And time and circumstance don’t limit when and how such love is shared. It can be a bright morning in May, or a cloudy afternoon in January, or a chill February day. It can be a bunch of flowers held by someone on a doorstep, or a middle-school class assignment, or a note to a child that becomes a note of hope to the world.